


The Dragons of Dawn

by pristineungift



Series: Keystones of Conquest [2]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Tragedy, Arranged Marriage, Arthurian, BAMF Daenerys Targaryen, BAMF Jon Snow, Canon-Typical Violence, Children of Characters, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, Dimension Travel, Dragons, Drama, Explicit Language, F/M, Fantasy, Game of Thrones Typical Everything, Greenseer, House Lannister, House Targaryen, Kings & Queens, Knights - Freeform, M/M, Magic, Multi, Nobility, POV Multiple, Prostitution, R plus L equals J, Sexual Content, Warg Jon Snow, Warging, Wargs, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2018-10-04 10:13:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 36,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10274636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pristineungift/pseuds/pristineungift
Summary: No matter how many dragons they have under their command, they will never win this war so long as any of the White Walkers live. The humans of Westeros are their own worst enemies, every person who dies rising again as a wight, their numbers shrinking even as the army of the Night King grows. Natasha has the opportunity now to turn the tide, to halt the snow, to bring the dawn. Certainly, she could break the grip of the inhuman creature that holds her, she could take Jaime and escape to fight another day. But when will she get this close again? Especially as it is believed that the one holding a blade of rimefrost to her throat may well be the most important of the Walkers. The keystone of their conquest.Sequel toA Widow's Walk.





	1. Prologue: Stark Tower

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all! Thank you for joining me in this, the sequel to _A Widow's Walk_. If you haven't read _A Widow's Walk_ , this fic is probably going to confuse you. As in the first fic, I took some liberties with the timing of certain events and existence of certain nobles so just go with it.  
>   
>  **Update Schedule:** The update speed of this particular fic is likely to be very slow. Consider yourself forewarned.

Clint sees Natasha vanish in a flash of blue energy on the roof of Stark Tower, but he refuses to believe she's dead. He already lost Coulson, he won't lose Nat too. He _can't._

He annoys the ever living fuck out of everyone above him in the chain of command until they agree Asgard's not getting the Tesseract back unless they help find Natasha. Because she's not dead. It was energy from a portal, right? She's not dead, she's just not _here_.

It takes a few months of Clint bringing coffee and donuts to Dr. Foster and her intern to make progress, Tony and Bruce dropping by every few days to lend their expertise. (And they are Tony and Bruce. You don't come through something like an alien invasion together without dropping the formalities.) Even then, they don't really get anywhere until Thor shows back up with a manacled Loki.

"I am to aid you in finding your missing spider," the tall douche says in his stupid Shakespeare voice, "as part of the punishment handed down by the Allfather."

Clint doesn't care if he's the All-Mother-Fucker, so long as it works. For the first time since this whole thing began, he's glad Loki's still alive.

Loki's proposed solution seems way more magic-y than strictly necessary, involving a summoning circle painted in the sample of Natasha's blood that Fury keeps on file in case of clones (Clint's never asked if that's so they can identify clones or make them and he doesn't plan to) and other weird stuff, but again. Whatever works. That's his new mantra. Natasha went to bat for him, never gave up on him even when it looked like he'd turned, so he won't give up on her. Won't won't won't.

"I am ready to begin," Loki says to the actual scientists who do much more sciency science.

"You sure about this Reindeer Games?" Tony asks, giving Loki the hairy eyeball. Bruce is on standby, ready to Hulk out at the first sign of a trick. Dr. Foster is flittering around a bunch of weird doodads that measure… stuff.

"As certain as I can be," Loki answers. "I have followed the trail left by the Tesseract's unique energy to the realm where she was mostly likely sent. If she lives, the ritual will summon her here."

"Do not worry," Thor booms. "My brother is an expert in the use of _seidr_."

Fuck that, Clint will worry if he wants.

They get the ritual underway. The weird machines hum and the bloody summoning circle glows, and Clint nocks an arrow, just in case they call Cthulhu here by mistake. Because that seems like a thing that could happen. (How is this is life?)

A mini tornado comes into being in the middle of the circle, little motes of blue light - like fireflies - dancing in the center of it until they start to make a picture. Little by little, piece by piece, they come together to form the silhouette of a woman. Then, with a crack of displaced air that stings Clint's eyes and rattles the windows, the tornado disperses and the silhouette becomes a flesh and blood person.

A flesh and blood person who just threw a fireball at Loki and is rolling forward and pulling what looks like a dagger from the bodice of her dress.

"Hey! Cool it!" Clint shouts as he takes aim at the woman-who-is-not-Natasha. Except… She stops when Clint shouts at her, but maintains a ready stance. The way she finds the exits, clocks where all the people are around her, and assesses their threat level is pure Black Widow.

She may not be Natasha, but Clint is willing to bet his favorite bow that Nat trained her. And now that he thinks about it - if you gave her red curls instead of black, and made her eyes blue instead of whatever weird green and violet mismatched thing she has going on right now, she would look a lot like Nat. Still not _her_ , but a relative. Maybe.

The others are all jabbering, but Clint isn't paying attention to them, too busy studying Not-Natasha. From the way her eyes are tracking, Clint can tell she understands what they're saying, though she's considering playing dumb. Such a classic Natasha move.

"Clint!" Tony barks right into his ear.

He flinches. "Dammit, Tony! What?!"

Not-Natasha (Notasha?) snaps to attention at that. In a voice with such a heavy Russian accent that at least some of it has to be put on, she says, "Clint?"

He nods, lowering his bow though he leaves the arrow on the string. "Yes."

"That is my uncle's name."

Clint might be having a stroke. "Uncle?" he squeaks out. Looking away from Notasha's face (because he can't bear to look at those almost-familiar features anymore) he finally notices that she's wearing some kind of medieval dress, heavy on black, red, and gold. She's got a huge honking ruby around her neck, and some gold hair ornaments that kind of make it look like her head is on fire, but like... in a sexy way. It's a very Fire Nation, Princess Azula kind of vibe.

Clint likes cartoons.

There's an awkward silence, then Tony says, "Jarvis, bring up security camera footage of Natalie Rushman."

A video starts playing in midair, showing Natasha in a posh business suit, pearls at her throat and Starkpad in hand. Notasha twitches and makes a strangled noise, but then leans forward, breathing out, "Magic."

She looks at Clint. "The woman in this vision resembles paintings I have seen of my grandmother. And if your name is Clint, then you are the knight known as Ser Hawkeye who once fought at her side. You were my favorite bedtime story as a child." She smiles, and it's so perfect Clint is pretty sure she's going to kill him later. Nat always kicked ( _kicks_! Nat always _kicks!_ ) his ass when she smiled ( _smiles_!) like that.

"As for me," Notasha puts her knife away and dips into a curtsey. "I am Romanova Pendragon, Princess of Summerhall. But as an old friend of my grandmother's, you may call me Nova."

"Hold up," Foster's intern Darcy says while Clint is wrapping his mind around that. "She's only been gone for a few months. How can she be your grandmother?"

"Time oft moves differently between dimensions," Loki says. Clint wants to punch him in the face on general principle. "It seems that Princess Romanova's realm is one that runs much faster than Midgard. I am more interested in how it is my spell brought her here, when it was designed to retrieve Agent Romanoff. Though I suppose if her highness was the only one of the proper bloodline on her world to bear the name, that could explain it…"

"Nat's dead isn't she?" Clint blurts.

Nova takes a step toward him, her eyes on his still loaded bow, but then she looks up into his face and it's like she sees straight through him. The irises are the wrong color, but the look is familiar. So familiar it hurts.

"Yes," Nova says. "My grandmother is dead."

Clint takes a deep breath. "She have a good life? I mean. I guess she did, since you're here and a princess and… yeah. Tell me how?"

Nova lays a hand on his arm and Clint startles, not sure when she got that close. Fucking Nat, having descendents just as terrifying as she is. Was.

"Of course," the princess says. "I will tell you the story as it is told in my family. But the tale is a long one."


	2. Last Hearth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for the lovely reviews!I'm posting this from my IPad, so the formatting may be off. It looks right to me, but who knows, amirite? Anyway, please bear with me. Also note I will be replying to reviews next time I'm on a desktop.
> 
>  **Jon's Commands to Ghost:** Natasha had the Starks train their wolves like military K9 units. The words Jon uses are German, and are the commands used by a police officer I know with his dog.

**27 Years Previous, Westeros Time**

_No matter how many dragons they have under their command, they will never win this war so long as any of the White Walkers live. The humans of Westeros are their own worst enemies, every person who dies rising again as a wight, their numbers shrinking even as the army of the Night King grows. Natasha has the opportunity now to turn the tide, to halt the snow, to bring the dawn. Certainly, she could break the grip of the inhuman creature that holds her, she could take Jaime and escape to fight another day. But when will she get this close again? Especially as it is believed that the one holding a blade of rimefrost to her throat may well be the most important of the Walkers. The keystone of their conquest. Identifiable by the circle of horns growing in a crown around his head, the Night King is said to be the one with the power to create more Walkers, however that is done._

_If Natasha kills him here, then this war is won. There will be no more Walkers to replace the ones that are slain, and without Walkers there are no wights. The dead will stop rising._

_Jaime reads her intention on her face. "Natasha, no!" he screams, trying to pull himself to his feet despite his injuries._

_Natasha looks down at the sword in her hand and laughs, ignoring the blackened, frostbitten flesh of her neck where the White Walker's blade touches her bare skin. It's strangely fitting that it is the ancestral weapon of House Lannister that will help her pay this final debt._

_The creature that holds her trapped against its chest does not react to her grim hysteria. Perhaps it thinks she's gone mad. Perhaps it isn't capable of understanding her. Perhaps it doesn't care._

" _Winter's over," Natasha says. "Summer's here."_

_Then she reverses her grip on Brightroar, plunging it up and at an angle through her own torso and into the creature behind her, catching it in the heart._

_She feels cold._

_To those watching, it looks like she and the Night King explode in a cloud of ice shards and silver light._

Bran Stark wakes with a scream.

**-l-**

Jon Pendragon leaves Casterly Rock at the head of a host, reveling in his new name and thoughts of his lady wife. Who would have ever thought that he, the baseborn bastard of Ned Stark, would turn out not to be a wolf at all, but a dragon. But it is still the Lannisters he owes for his new station in life. It is Tyrion Lannister, his good-father, who gave him land and a name besides 'Snow,' and Jaime Lannister who trained and knighted him. It is Tasha Lannister, now Pendragon, who gave him her heart and her maidenhead and hopefully one day will give him a family. And it is Lady Sansa Lannister who gave him the truth of his parents and a brace of dragon eggs.

It's amazing, how different she is from Lady Catelyn. Sometimes Jon wonders what it would have been like if he were raised as Tyrion's bastard. Somehow he doesn't think Aunt Sansa would have treated him badly, though it's very likely she'd have murdered whatever woman was reputed to be his mother. Or maybe she wouldn't. Jon's never been able to figure out how she thinks, no matter how often Uncle Tyrion lectures him or how exasperated Tasha gets with him. His mind just doesn't work in the same twisty way theirs do. Too much wolf blood, he supposes, though that doesn't stop Arya.

Ah well. He'll leave the skullduggery to his lady wife. (His wife! He's married! To a lady! The most beautiful lady!) Jon will just point his sword where she tells him. It seems to work out well enough for Uncle Jaime.

They make good time to where the Northern forces are mustering at Last Hearth. As the only knight in the company and the good-son of Lord Lannister, Jon is in command. He tries to speak like Tyrion and walk like Jaime, a piece of advice that his good-brother Gerion gave him.

_"Father is the perfect lord," Gerion always says, "and Uncle Jaime the perfect knight. If they were one man they would be the perfect king."_

Jon doesn't quite have Gerion's easy charm, but he tries, and the men seem to respond well enough. In fact, in some ways they like him more, for he is a bastard who became a knight and wed a lady, while Gerion was born a lord. They see Jon as one of them, what they can achieve if they work hard enough.

Jon doesn't have the heart to tell them that it's more to do with his luck than anything else. He's not stupid. He knows that Tasha loves him, but he also knows that she'd never have married him if he wasn't the best way to shield her family from the wrath of Daenerys Targaryen. It's for that reason that he hopes she's with child. If he dies fighting the wildlings, a child of his blood might one day be the only thing that stands between Casterly Rock and a hail of dragon fire. (While Jon would prefer to be present for the births of his children as Uncle Tyrion was with Aunt Sansa, he would rather his first child be born without him if it means the rest of his family is safe.)

At the edge of the encampment that has sprung up around Last Hearth, Jon dismounts his horse and signals one of the younger boys he's been using as a squire to come take his reins. His white direwolf, Ghost, nearly as big as a pony these days, trots over to stand at attention at his side. Jon holds a silent debate with himself, but then points after the boy leading his horse and says, " _Wache!_ " Ghost pulls back a lip to show his displeasure, but follows after the horse.

Ghost makes most men uneasy, and Jon doesn't have time to soothe their feelings at the moment. He is to go to the command tent and report to Lord Stark.

He takes a deep breath.

When he enters the massive thing of dirty white canvas and grey fur, Ned Stark isn't there. Instead he's greeted by Robb and a man around their age in the black cloak of the Night's Watch.

"Jon? Jon Snow, is that you?" Robb asks, his blue eyes wide. He's broader at the shoulder than Jon remembers, his hair longer and his beard fuller. He looks grim, as if the North has managed to prematurely age him, carving lines around his lips and eyes. (Robb stopped writing as often after Lady Catelyn was made to join the Silent Sisters.)

"It's Pendragon now," Jon replies, unable to help the smile that stretches his lips. "I served the Lannisters well enough that I've been given a knighthood and some land, as well as the hand of Tasha Lannister."

Robb's eyebrows shoot up and his icy facade cracks for a moment. He smiles back. "Oho? That mouthy thing that's best friends with Arya?"

"I happen to like her mouth," Jon says without thinking, then immediately blushes. The Brother of the Night's Watch cackles.

At that moment the fur that hangs at the entrance of the tent is swept aside and Ned Stark enters. Jon turns to look at him, the man he thought was his father for so long. The man who lied to keep Jon alive, even as he allowed him to be mistreated.

Lord Stark seems smaller than Jon remembers, but for the life of him Jon can't say if it's that he's gotten taller or Ned has shrunk somehow.

"Greetings, Ser…?" Lord Stark says in a flat, lifeless voice, and Jon blinks when he realizes his father… uncle… the man who raised him doesn't recognize him.

"Pendragon," Jon says. "Jon Pendragon. Once called Jon Snow."

At that Ned starts, and looks at him more closely. "Jon…? By the Old Gods and the New! Look at you!"

Jon looks down at himself and supposes the difference would be startling for one who hasn't seen him since he left Winterfell. Instead of thick grey wool and furs, he wears fine leather in dark red with burnished gold plate mail, the leather tooled with scrolling designs of lions and wolves running together. The joints and insides of his armor are insulated with thick black bear fur, and his cloak is more of the same. His hair is long, reaching just past his shoulders because it is traditional for Targaryens (and Tasha likes to pull on his curls), and kept out of his face with a multitude of warrior braids. He keeps his beard trimmed into a goatee, though the time on the road has made it scruffy and left a growth of stubble over his cheeks. He favors fighting with two swords in a style he learned from Lady Lannister, and wears his long sword on his back and his short sword on his belt, never mind the various knives, stilettos, and other weapons hidden on his person. (He's particularly proud of the garrote in his left boot heel).

But most striking is his new tabard, made for him by the ladies of the Rock at the same time they were sewing Tasha's wedding cloak, which features his winged direwolf breathing fire and the hastily embroidered words of his House, _We Always Return_.

"You look good," Ned Stark says.

Jon freezes for a moment that lasts eternity, _You_ _lied to me, I hate you, I hate her, Why, Thank you, I love you, I'm grateful_ , all competing behind his teeth, waiting to roll over his tongue. But this is neither the time nor the place, so all he says is, "I'm here with the reinforcements for the Night's Watch."

The ranger that Jon's almost forgotten about snorts. "What Night's Watch? There's only a handful of us left. The wildlings have taken Castle Black."

Jon looks at him, taking in his tattered black clothes, the patch he wears over one eye, and the scars on his neck that look like they were made by human nails. His hair is oily and plastered to his head, and his face dirty, one of his front teeth missing. Jon abruptly remembers that most members of the Night's Watch are criminals. Rapists, murderers, thieves… And to think, he once wanted to join them.

"This is Theon Greyjoy, Acting Lord Commander of the Night's Watch," Lord Stark introduces them.

"Yeah, well, only one left alive that can fight worth a damn, aren't I? And that's only because I know when to run. Those other idiots held their ground, and now they're dead." Theon says, an angry, twisted look on his face. He reminds Jon of a rat. "And don't call me Greyjoy. I've told you that," he adds as an afterthought, followed by a mumbled, "Fucking kinslaying cunts."

Greetings and introductions done, Jon accompanies Lord Stark, Robb, and Theon into Last Hearth where the rest of the Northern lords are gathered around a map, forming a plan of attack.

"Don't mind him," Robb whispers to Jon when Ned moves to talk to Greatjon Umber. "He hasn't been the same since Mother… And with Bran running off-"

"Bran ran off?" Jon demands, barely remembering to keep his voice down. "How? I thought he had to walk with a cane?"

Robb shrugs, staring off into the distance. "Your good-father sent us designs for a saddle that lets him ride. He started having nightmares, talking about crazy things, things like out of Old Nan's stories, and danger beyond the Wall. One morning his horse was gone, and so was he. I think… I think he might have gone mad. Like Mother and Aunt Lysa." Robb gives a bitter chuckle. "Rickon is the only Stark in Winterfell now."

**-l-**

As a landed knight and commander of the Lannister host until they are officially sworn in as Black Brothers, Jon is offered a bed inside Last Hearth. Instead he camps out with his men, another tip that Gerion gave him. He shares a tent with Theon, since it's already set up and large enough, and their combined body heat will keep it warmer. He's not sure why Theon offers, but he trusts Ghost will keep the Lord Commander from trying anything untoward.

"What's it like?"

"What?" Jon asks, trying to sound grumpy even though he isn't really sleeping. He's not as good at this as Tasha, Clynt, Gerion, and even Arya, but as Uncle Tyrion and Aunt Sansa have told him over and over again, _All war is deception_. Theon being the only member of the Night's Watch to survive the wildlings taking the Wall seems suspicious to him. He wonders if the Northern lords have considered it.

"What's it like, being with a woman? A lady? You said you're married."

"You don't know?"

"Joined up when I was but a lad to escape the Greyjoy Massacre, and you don't desert the Night's Watch. And s'not like there's a bunch of women hanging around Castle Black. Fucked a couple of the boys in exchange for my protection, but I figure it's different with a lady."

Jon tenses at that admission, though more at the way Theon says it than anything else. He knows about Gerion's dalliances with Loras Tyrell and doesn't have any problem with it since Gerion has promised he won't do it anymore after he marries Jon's sister-cousin. But somehow what Theon describes doesn't seem like the same thing.

"Is she soft?" Theon asks. "Does she smell nice?"

Jon doesn't want to talk about his wife like this to another man. He doesn't want other men to even _think_ about his wife like this. But he knows that Tasha would box his ears and tell him to paint Theon a portrait of her breasts if it will get the other man to spill his secrets, so Jon grits his teeth and says, "Yes. She smells like the sea she grew up swimming in, and the Dornish spices she likes in her food. Her skin is soft, but her muscles are firm. She's a Lannister, and Lannister women are different. I've no doubt that she could kill me with one hand tied behind her back and the artistic way she spilled my blood would perfectly match her dress and the tea service she arranged for the occasion."

Jon can hear Theon's blankets rustling for a moment. Then he says, "Yeah. That's nice. What's her cunt feel like?"

Jon squeezes his eyes shut and realizes it's going to be a long, annoying night.

**-l-**

It's still dark when the wildlings attack, so Jon can't be sure how long he's slept. True winter is setting in and in the North especially the nights can be so long as to encompass several days.

It seems the Northmen made a mistake when they were forming their strategy. They assumed that the wildlings would dig in at Castle Black, that they would want to reinforce their position there before moving further south. That it would be the men of the North who would be marching on the attack.

They were wrong, and now their men will pay for it.

Jon rolls out of his sleeping furs, glad now that Jaime made him spend hours getting in and out of various types of bedding and immediately strapping on his armor and weapons. He's ready before the wildlings have finished slaughtering their way through the less alert men at the edges of the encampment.

 _If the men on watch are still alive_ , Jon thinks, _I'll kill them for this_.

Striding out of the tent he guts a wildling man as he runs past, spinning to behead another. The blood steams as it hits the snow. A quick glance reveals that the wildlings are moving in a frenzied mob, no discipline among their ranks, blindly thrusting whatever weapons they have through tent walls in the hopes of killing the men inside before they can fight back. " _Fass_!" Jon orders Ghost, and the white wolf is off, weaving in and out of the tents, hamstringing wildlings with snaps of his powerful jaws, leaping on others and tearing out their throats.

Something is odd about the wildlings. Jon has fought before. Never in the pitched battle of war, no, but he's patrolled the Westlands for bandits and helped put down a riot in Lannisport. He's skirmished on the Kingsroad, and competed in tournaments. He knows how men look when they are determined, when they are greedy, when they are desperate, when they mean to take what they want or what they need by force.

The wildlings do not look desperate. With their frenetic movements, the whites showing around their eyes, and the foamy spittle frothing from some of their lips, they look a step beyond that. This is pure, animal terror.

 _They're not conquering_ , he realizes as he kills another that runs straight at him, his swords whistling through the air and his cloak swinging behind him. _They're running from something._

"To me, men! To me!" Jon screams once it occurs to him that all of the other lords are inside Last Hearth and no one else will be taking command. The wildlings outnumber them, but if Jon can get the men to form ranks, skill and strategy may yet win the day.

The Westlanders start to obey him, chanting, "Pendragon! Pendragon!" even as a man wielding an axe and wearing Bolton colors demands, "Why should we listen to you?!"

Jon flourishes his swords to fend off a wildling with a spear and turns on his heel even as he does so, his booted foot coming up to strike the Bolton man in the diaphragm, knocking the wind out of him. "You will listen to me because I am a wolf who learned at the feet of lions!" Jon says, no longer shouting, but pitching his voice to be heard across the battlefield as best he can. "You will listen to me because I am Ser Jon Pendragon and I've earned everything I've got!" In a move too fast for most to follow, Jon sheathes his short sword to free up his left hand, draws a throwing knife from the bracer on his right arm, and flings it into the eye of the wildling with the spear. "You will listen to me because I am going to keep you alive!"

Jon steps in front of the downed Bolton man, taking an arrow that is little more than a sharpened stick with a fire hardened point on the chest plate of his mail, preventing it from striking the Bolton man in the face.

The Bolton man gets up, his hoarse cries joining the chant of, "Pendragon! Pendragon!" as the men form up around Jon.

**-l-**

The wildlings are routed at last when the men inside Last Hearth join the battle, streaming out of the keep's gates to catch the wildlings between their charge and the wedge of men formed around Jon. Jon had hoped that someone inside the walls would pick up on the opportunity, which is why he'd had his men retreat until the wildlings had their backs to the gate. While a little over half of their forces are gone, Jon is willing to count it a victory since they were caught so outnumbered and unaware, and with this battle they must have routed the majority of the wildling host.

But that victory is short lived.

It starts with a single lumbering figure. Jon is on watch with Robb after throwing what Clynt would call a 'bitch fit' about the previous watchers failing to sound an alarm, when the man comes stumbling out of the trees.

"Halt!" Robb orders.

The figure keeps shuffling forward.

Ghost and Robb's wolf, Grey Wind, are growling. Jon trusts their senses far more than his own. " _Veran_ ," he quietly orders Ghost, telling the wolf to search for threats. Ghost barks loudly three times.

Jon says, " _Fass_."

Ghost closes the distance between them and the lumbering man quickly, taking the man down in one smooth leap. With a wet ripping tear, the man's life is ended.

Jon calls Ghost back, rubbing the wolf's ears and praising him.

The man gets up, his head hanging by a few stringy bits of flesh.

Jon's heart stops, then makes up for it by trying to leap out of his chest. "What?" he mutters even as Robb swears. "By the Old Gods!"

"No one could live through that. How is he standing!" Robb growls. Grey Wind, sensing his master's distress, makes his own attack on the man, ripping the fiend's arm off.

It doesn't bleed. The man keeps coming.

Jon can't think. He's trying. He knows there's some connection he should be making, something he should be doing, some conclusion he should be coming to, but it's like his mind is a horse trying to run on ice. He wishes Tasha was there to tell him what to do. Then he's glad Tasha isn't there, especially if she's with child.

Tasha might be with child.

"It's a wight. Like the old tales. It's a fucking wight," Jon says before he knows what he's thinking himself. " _Gib laut_!"

Ghost howls, sounding the alarm.

It's pandemonium after that. The men who died in the earlier battle, whether Northman or wildling, rise and turn on the living. The few who were already buried dig their way out of their graves. The ones in piles to be burned climb over each other. The ones that still lay in the battlefield simply stand up.

The remaining men don't stand a chance. The wights are slow and can't think as a man does, can't match a living swordsman stroke for stroke, but they are relentless and they feel no pain. Added to that the sheer horror of their existence - men with fatal wounds, men with missing limbs, men with no guts, with arrows still sticking out of them - up and moving, dead men with the faces of fallen friends, and all of them with soulless eyes that glow an eldritch blue… It is enough to break the bravest spirit.

Jon fights. By the Old Gods, does he fight. But it doesn't matter how many he cuts down. They always get up again. And if they can't get up, they crawl. He's dragged down by a mob of the things and it's only Ghost fending them off and Robb pulling him to his feet that saves him. He's getting tired, and there's fire in his side. Something is wrong with his left foot, but he can't spare the time to figure out what.

Their men are starting to scatter and flee as it becomes more and more obvious that nothing slows the wights down for long. In the distance Jon can hear a voice that sounds like Theon scream, " _What is dead may never die_!" followed by mad laughter and a bloody gurgle.

They make their way towards the gates of Last Hearth, Lord Stark hacking a path through the wights to join them, but nothing they do will kill the things. Even the detached parts still move. There has to be something. Something! What did Old Nan's stories say?

Ned reaches them and they exchange nods, Ned moving to take the center position as the three of them fall back toward the gate. _Ice_ seems to actually keep the wights down. They lay where they fall when Lord Stark strikes a fatal blow, and they do not get back up again. At least not soon enough for Jon to see. But even with that, there are too many, the crush too deep for there to be any way to close the gates of Last Hearth as Jon had hoped.

"Fire!" Robb exclaims. "We need to burn them!"

It seems obvious once he says it. Jon thinks of the blue dragon egg hidden amongst the things in his tent, and briefly wargs into Ghost so that he can give the wolf instructions to fetch it, his grip on his swords going slack. If the dragon inside the shell is ever going to wake for him, it will be now. (Later he will curse himself for a fool. Even if the dragon miraculously hatched, a newborn wouldn't be able to breathe fire. But in the heat of the battle, the shock of facing an undead host, that fact eludes him. It costs him dearly.)

Jon comes back to himself just in time to see Lord Stark throw himself between Jon and what looks like the wight of Ramsay Snow. Ned makes a strange choking noise and something warm sprays across Jon's face. He licks his lips and realizes it's Ned's blood.

"No," Jon croaks, unable to believe what's happening. He can't wrap his mind around it, it's more impossible than the dead coming back to life. Ned Stark is supposed to be immortal. And yet before his very eyes, the light leaves Lord Stark's eyes, only to be replaced by an unnatural glowing blue.

The wight that used to be Ned Stark raises _Ice_. Jon just stands there and stares. It's Robb's scream of rage that pulls him out of his stupor. He crosses his swords just in time to block the downward stroke of _Ice_. Robb goes _fucking berserk_ and beheads Ned - beheads the wight in one swing, then hacks the body to pieces.

"He wouldn't want to be that!" The new Lord Stark repeats as he continues his grisly work; tears, blood, and snot pouring down his face. "I can't let him be that!"

Jon does his best to keep the rest of the wights at bay while Robb dismembers his - their - father and pulls _Ice_ from still twitching fingers. Once the House blade is in his hands, Robb promptly doubles over and throws up. Jon wishes he could do the same, but one of them has to keep the horde from overwhelming them, something that's getting harder and harder to do.

Ghost reappears, the bag that contains Jon's dragon egg dangling from his mouth. Jon hasn't seen Grey Wind in a while and isn't sure if the wolf still lives.

"The keep," Robb coughs out in between spitting and stabbing out with _Ice_ to keep the wights away. "They don't think. If we lead them into the keep we can lock them in and burn it down."

"We may not get out again."

"Then we die doing our duty."

Jon thinks of Tasha.

"So be it."

Jon takes his dragon egg from Ghost, then tells the wolf to go home. It may take weeks, months even, but Jon is confident that Ghost will find his way back to Casterly Rock. He watches the wolf go, and for a second thinks he spies a knight in the distance, armor glinting oddly in the moonlight and sitting upon a large steed with too many legs to be a horse. But he blinks and it's gone, and he dismisses it as his imagination.

Together, he and his brother who's not his brother stamp and yell and lead as many wights as they can into the halls of Last Hearth, knocking torches and candles over as they go. Robb holds one of the narrow halls with _Ice_ while Jon dashes to the kitchen, grabbing up anything he can that will help the flames spread. Oil, ale, wine - he grabs up bottles and dashes back into the hall, flinging them into the rooms he passes, then goes back for more. Robb retreats as Jon finishes each hall, leading the wights further into their trap.

Then there is nowhere left to go. They are in the tiny dungeon beneath the keep, the door barred against both wights and flames though it is unlikely to hold for long against either.

Exhausted, Robb lets _Ice_ clatter to the stone floor, something that would be sacrilegious in other circumstances. "Brother," he says, turning to pull Jon into one last embrace.

Jon flinches.

"Robb I have to tell you… I…" He can't find the words. Now, when it is so important, when death is held back only by a wooden door, he can't find the words. He scrabbles at his belt instead, where hangs the bag that contains his dragon egg. Drawing the egg out, he shows it to Robb.

Robb stares at him uncomprehendingly.

"Rhaegar and Lyanna… I'm not Ned Stark's bastard." His tongue feels thick. It's getting warm in the dungeon. Sweat beads on Robb's forehead, though Jon is fine, even in his heavy furs. "I'm a Targaryen. It's possible that the fire… I might live through it."

Robb's eyes blaze so bright a blue that for a moment Jon fears Robb took a fatal wound without telling him and has become a wight. But then he moves, and he's too fast to be undead. Jon braces himself, prepared to accept a blow, but Robb does not strike him. Instead he grips Jon's face, one hand on each side, and presses their foreheads together.

"Promise me something," Robb says, his breath on Jon's lips and his voice filled with black fury.

"Yes," Jon says, prepared to do anything, anything at all to make this better. Whatever Robb wants.

Robb meets Jon's eyes. "Promise me that when you get out of here, you'll burn them. _Burn them all._ "

Jon says, "I promise."


	3. Meereen

_A son of Rhaegar lives. He lairs with lions and fights alongside wolves. Find him at the Wall._

When Daenerys Targaryen first hears those words spoken, all she feels is relief. Later she will wonder who sent the message and why, if it's true, if it's a trick, what her nephew might want from her if he really exists, but in the moment she thinks, _That means he's the true heir! The true king! I don't have to fight for the Iron Throne. Let him help our people._

Dany is tired. The two cities she freed on her way to Meereen have fallen back into slavery and chaos, she is plagued by enemies within and without, and worst of all she has lost control of her dragons. She was forced to chain Rhaegal and Viserion to protect her subjects and she hasn't seen Drogon since the charred bones of a toddler were brought to her. She thought being blood of the dragon was enough, but it is clear to her now that there is some magic, some ancient technique to controlling and riding dragons that has been lost to time. She refuses to believe her ancestors simply didn't care what destruction their winged brothers wrought.

She's tempted to run. To leave all those who clamor for her attention, her love, her leadership, her _death_ behind and go find her nephew and just do what he tells her to, but she knows her pride will never allow it. She became _khaleesi_ , became a conqueror, and she will be a ruler too. She just has to stay alive long enough to learn.

Alas, it is not to be.

She is walking the streets of her city, letting the people see her, trying to understand what she needs to do to get her kingdom back in some semblance of control, when a child approaches her with a wooden ball.

Even now, after everything, she is too naive. Or perhaps it is arrogance, a mistaken belief that after everything else she's lived through, no one else would dare try to kill her. Whatever the reason, she accepts the toy from the child, thinking it a gift from a young subject to their queen, a smile on her face. She has just enough time to think that ruling isn't all bad before the manticore hidden within the hollow ball drops into her hand and stings her.

Fire cannot kill a dragon, but the manticore's venom makes her veins _burn_.

She screams.

The pain is so immense that she loses all sense of what's going on around her. The world tilts sideways, and something slams into her elbow, cracking the bone and sending a splash of her blood into the street. She writhes and claws at her attacker, unable to comprehend that the removal of her arm might be enough to save her from the poison. She keeps screaming, kicking the man whose face she no longer recognizes.

Her scream is answered by a roar.

A shadow falls over them, blotting out the sun, and a gout of dragon flame sears the air. Even through her pain, Dany recognizes Drogon. She's happy that she'll die with family, at least.

Drogon tears apart anyone unlucky enough to be near Dany when she was attacked. It's the work of seconds, his claws and teeth flashing, his black and red scales shining with spilled blood. Then he settles on his haunches and nudges Dany's prone form with his enormous snout.

Her screams have faded into whimpers now, her vision rapidly dimming, her strength waning as blood pumps from her partially severed arm. The flesh of her limp hand is already putrefying, thanks to the venom of the manticore.

Drogon nudges her again. Dany's eyes snap open and lock with Drogon's reptilian orbs. But it isn't just their gaze that is connected. In that moment, her last moment, Daenerys understands what past Targaryens knew. It is not enough to command a dragon. A dragon is not a slave. It may not be tamed. But bonding with a dragon?

That is very possible.

Dany's mind, or spirit, whatever it is that makes her Daenerys Targaryen, pours out of her through her eyes, leaping from her dying body into Drogon's like lightning out of a clear blue sky. She fills Drogon up, her mind flooding his, rolling over and through him until there is no telling where she ends and he begins. He fights. Of course he does. Drogon does not like submitting, not even to her. But here, on this plane, she is the bigger creature. She is years older, her mind more sophisticated, and her Targaryen blood keeps her from being lost in the dragon's powerful instincts.

The human body of Daenerys Stormborn, Queen of Meereen, lets out a long rattling breath, and the consciousness of the last of the Mad King's children and her dragon merge to form one being.

She - for dragons can change their gender in order to breed and she wants to be female - roars and flames in a combination of triumph and lamentation.

Then she falls on the corpses that lay in the street, gorging herself on the fresh meat. She will need to be strong, if she is going to free her brother-sons and go find her nephew-cousin.

**-l-**

Flying across the Narrow Sea is more difficult than she thought it would be. The air is cooler over the ocean, making it harder for her wings to get lift, which means she has to flap more. They have to stop every so often to rest and fish, and catching enough to fill three dragon stomachs takes a long time. Rhaegal and Viserion keep testing her place as queen of their clan, and she has to force them back into line without killing them or hurting them so badly they can't fly. If she wasn't hunting for her nephew-cousin, the human who will give them purpose, she would have turned back half a dozen times.

But she perseveres, and when she spots a body of land in the distance, she forces Rhaegal and Viserion to join her in swimming the rest of the way so that they won't be spotted. They are surprisingly good swimmers for beings of fire and air. Their wings are adequate fins, and the fire in their bellies keeps them warm and makes them naturally buoyant. Catching fish is a lot easier too. If she'd known, she would've had them swim the whole way instead of flying.

Once the coast is close enough that she won't lose sight of it, she puts it to her left and starts swimming. The message she got when she was still human said her nephew-cousin was at the Wall, and the Wall is supposed to be in the North. She hopes it's easy to find. It's not like she's ever been to the Seven Kingdoms.


	4. Lannisport

Gerion moves through the streets and back alleys of Lannisport at the head of a triangle made up of himself, his mother, and his sister. Dressed in the black furs and leathers his mother's agents use on covert missions, the three of them are as silent and fleeting as shadows.

It is a rare moment of daylight, the only time they dare continue their search for Gerion's missing family members. The White Walkers and their army of corpses seem to lose power and go to ground whenever the sun manages to pierce the cloud cover as it rarely does these days. In the darkness their power reigns, and any warm blooded creature that wants to live hides and prays that they are not found. And so it is that Gerion, Tasha, and their mother (whose real name is apparently Natasha), have spent the last fortnight slowly inching their way through the town in what Mother calls a grid search pattern; moving in the daylight and holing up in the nearest available building when the light begins to wane.

And there are plenty of abandoned buildings to choose from. Lannisport, once a bustling center of trade, is now a tomb, only the sound of the waves lapping at the docks to show that time itself has not become as frozen as everything else.

Gerion still regrets that he told his betrothed, Sansa Stark, to go into the city without him. He can't even remember why he didn't want to leave the Rock that day, only that he suggested she take Uncle Jaime or Lady Brienne with her for protection if she was determined to go attend her charities.

And so Uncle Jaime took her. And that very afternoon an unnatural darkness stole the sun from the sky and the dead began to walk as white winds howled.

Gerion cannot stop the guilt that eats at him for not being with Sansa. For not paying her more attention, for not insisting she stay in the Rock and spend time with him. Worse still is the fact that in his heart of hearts, he resents her, through no fault of her own. It is simply that she is not Loras, and never can be. She will never call him _Geri_ in a husky baritone while they steal secret kisses, or win a joust for him and crown his sister the Queen of Love and Beauty because she cannot openly give the wreath of flowers to him. There will never be that thrill of danger lest they be discovered, nor the relentless pressure to keep their affair hidden.

He is relieved every time she is away from him, for it allows him a reprieve from the act of courtly love he has cultivated towards her. Not that she will ever know it. No, she is a gentle, loving soul, and she doesn't deserve to be ill-treated simply because Gerion can't be with the person he truly wants (especially seeing as it isn't an objection to her in particular; if it weren't her he would only be marrying some other maiden who can birth him heirs). Perhaps if he perpetuates the lie long enough, he will even come to believe it himself. Especially once he is wed, for he has sworn he will not do to his wife what was done to his father. Sansa will be his dear lady love, and Loras merely a comrade in arms.

(A small part of Gerion wonders if this is how his mother feels about his father and Uncle Jaime, and is the only reason he's ever been able to forgive her for the shadow in Father's eyes.)

Tasha is lucky that she genuinely loves her husband as far as Gerion can tell. (Though with her, who can say? It is not as if she's ever caught on to just how little of his regard for Sansa is genuine. They are their mother's children.) On the other hand, perhaps she is the unluckiest of them all, for there has been no news of Jon, nor anyone else in the North for months. She could be a widow already.

(It occurs to him to wonder why his mother is called Black Widow. Was she married before she came to Westeros? Does he have other siblings? How old is she really? Is everyone in her realm blessed with the healing, strength, speed, and longevity that Gerion and the twins inherited from her? Are her people the origin of the stories from the Age of Heroes? There hasn't been time to ask.)

It is in an abandoned smithy that they find Sansa and Uncle Jaime at last. Sansa is dirty as Gerion has never seen her before, her hair lank with oil and sweat and soot upon her face, blood and scorch marks on her torn gown. She flies into his arms and he surprises himself with how eagerly he opens them to her, clutching her to himself.

In love with her or not she is still a dear, true friend and has been since the instant they met.

Over Sansa's head, Gerion watches as Tasha secures the smithy door while Uncle Jaime and Mother stare at each other. Mother's leg twitches with an aborted step forward, then her hand as she stops herself from reaching out. Uncle Jaime is not so disciplined, lasting only a moment before he says, "Seven hells, Sansa!" and surges forward, sweeping Mother into a bruising kiss, tears leaving tracks in the grime on his face.

"I have much to tell you," Mother murmurs, so quietly that Gerion wonders if someone without his heritage would hear it. He's never been quite sure if his senses are enhanced along with his strength and agility.

"Later," Uncle Jaime responds. "I thought never to see your face again. Never to touch you." He growls and kisses her again, Tasha smirking at the scene as she walks past the embracing couple to stand with Gerion and Sansa.

Sansa's eyes are wide, her mouth opening and closing like the trout of the Tully sigil. "But… Lord Tyrion… They can't…" she sputters.

Tasha rolls her eyes and Gerion suppresses an annoyed grunt. It's just like his sister to leave him to deal with Sansa's oblivious nature and delicate sensibilities. Just for this, he's not saying a damn thing to help Tasha when Jon eventually realizes the truth of the triad that rule House Lannister.

If Jon still lives, that is.

That thought sobering him, Gerion starts to usher Sansa towards a door in the back of the smithy which presumably leads to the former smith's living quarters in order to give Mother and Uncle Jaime some privacy.

"Why did you hide here?" Tasha asks, semi-effectively distracting Sansa from the increasingly heated reunion taking place behind them. Perhaps she's not so useless after all.

"It was Ser Jaime's plan," Sansa says in an absent, hollow voice, clinging to Gerion's arm as if she will never let go again. "The… the things, the monsters, they can sense where people are. I think it's to do with heat, because they're so cold and I told him…" And now she's staring forward, heedless of where Gerion is leading her, the shock of Uncle Jaime and Mother's affair subsumed in the horrors she has witnessed. "He had us come here because they expect a forge to be hot, so they don't notice the warmth of our blood. And if any wights come, it's easy to burn their bodies so that they don't rise again…"

She gives a full body shudder, and Gerion exchanges a look with Tasha. Sansa has always been the most delicate of the Starks, the most easily upset, the most easily manipulated… that she is still alive and coherent after hiding in a forge from evils out of legend with only her own wits and Uncle Jaime to defend her hints at the steel hidden at her core. His betrothed is a Wolf of Winterfell after all, and nothing proves her worthiness to one day be the Lioness of the Rock more than the fact that she is still able to keep her countenance when she asks, "Are the rumors true, then? Is Ser Jaime your father?"

Tasha says, "We have two fathers, regardless which of them gave the seed," at the same time that Gerion declares, "Tyrion is my father."

**-l-**

It is decided that Gerion will take Sansa back to the Rock while Mother, Uncle Jaime, and Tasha head north to find Jon. Gerion protests this arrangement. Uncle Jaime can take care of himself, but he does not have the advantages granted to Gerion by his mother's blood. Not to mention Gerion hasn't spent the past fortnight sleep deprived and eating rats. But Uncle Jaime will not be swayed. Reunited with the woman he loves, Uncle Jaime is adamant that he will not be separated from her so soon, especially if she is going into danger. And neither of them will let Tasha go on alone to find Jon, a quest from which she cannot be swayed.

"Besides," Uncle Jaime jokes, his famed leonine grin stretching his lips wide. "With what your mother told me last evening, I feel I need to get to know her all over again."

" _I don't understand," Uncle Jaime's voice filtered through the walls of the smithy, no matter how quietly he speaks. Or perhaps it is simply Gerion's hearing that makes it seem so. "Why wait so long to tell us? At first, yes, it made sense to keep it secret, but after you knew we loved you?"_

" _Tyrion knew… I may not have told him outright, but I didn't try especially hard to hide from him either."_

" _He can't have. He would have told me. Tyrion doesn't lie to me. No more than I thought you would."_

" _Oh Jaime, you great golden fool," Mother says, the warm affection in her voice turning the insult into an endearment. "He's lied to you a thousand times, and so have I."_

There is a shadow in Uncle Jaime's eyes now that he knows how thoroughly he has been deceived by Natasha Romanova… a shadow which mirrors the one in Father's gaze.

It feels like justice.

Still, when it comes time to part ways, Gerion lingers to have a private farewell with his mother, both of them aware that this may be the last time they see one another.

"Come back," Gerion says, trying to put a tone of command in his words. To sound like Lord Lannister. "Father will wither without you… and Uncle Jaime. That is the truth."

It is a painfully obvious attempt at emotional manipulation. So obvious that it is no real attempt at all. But he knows better than to voice the accusations and pleas that echo in his mind, to let the irrational demands of the child who still lives inside him have free reign. Emotion has a time and place, but it is not here, on the field of battle, in a time of war.

Mother's eyes trail over him, noting his tells, memorizing his face, her blue irises piercing him as surely as the winter wind. Then she says, "Truth is a matter of circumstances. It's not all things to all people all the time, and neither am I."

Gerion's breath hitches at the Black Widow's words coming from Mother's mouth. Natasha Romanova's mouth. Sansa Lannister. She is all of them and none of them.

Ser Gerion Lannister, the Lordling Who Roars, Heir of the Rock, closes his eyes for a long moment. And then, before he can stop himself, Geri opens them and says, "I know it is unlikely since he should be in King's Landing, but if you see Loras in all this madness-"

Mother smiles, a small quirk of her lips, and makes him a promise. "If I should see Loras Tyrell, I will tell him your truth."


	5. Off the Shore of the Bay of Seals

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you for reading and reviewing!
> 
>  **Also a note on chapter length:** Some people have complained about the variance in chapter length. If you haven't noticed, I'm dividing chapters by where (i.e. what location) they take place. So obviously, a place where lots of things happen will be a longer chapter than a place where few things happen. Aside from that, I've never been one to fuss too much about how long an individual chapter is. It's as long or as short as it needs to be.

Jon moves forward at a steady trudge. One foot after the other. After the other. After the other. He doesn't know where he's going, except _away_. Away from the hordes of undead, from the place where Eddard Stark died, from Robb's last stand, from the fire that birthed him anew even as it destroyed everything around him.

Something strange happened during the razing of Last Hearth. Jon would call it a hallucination, but he doesn't quite believe that. No, it was real. A vision. Perhaps what the Targaryens referred to as a dragon dream. The fire healed him of all the injuries he took in the battle with the wights, but it did more than that. He feels stronger than he should be, and he is now as immune to cold as he is to fire, a good thing since the fire burned his clothes away and warped his armor into a mound of slag.

And then there was _them_. The two people who appeared when Jon was surrounded by flames and his dragon egg gave its first crack. They were there and yet not, standing before Jon but unable to touch him. A tall man with white hair and a woeful expression next to a woman with smoky curls and an angular jaw that was thrust continually forward, giving her a defiant air.

 _You are more than I thought you could be_ , the man's voice whispered directly into Jon's mind.

 _You are worthy, little wolf_ , the woman's voice came.

Then, together, _For yours is the song of ice and fire._

And then Jon's dragon hatched.

So he trudges naked through the snow, carrying _Ice_ in one hand and his newborn dragon in the other. He is tempted to let the heavy greatsword drag the ground since it certainly won't hurt the Valyrian steel, but cannot bring himself to disrespect the Stark family's blade. Not after the way his father-uncle and brother-cousin died. He will keep the blade with him and treat it well, and then he will return it to Rickon. The last Stark in the North.

 _If he still lives_ , the thought intrudes. _Who's to say these creatures haven't attacked Winterfell? With most of the fighting men at Last Hearth, the castle wouldn't last long._

Jon puts it from his mind and keeps trudging. He doesn't know how long it's been since The Last Hearth Stand. He sleeps when the sun is out and walks when it's dark, with the theory that it is better to be a moving target when those creatures are at the height of their powers. (At least, that's what Old Nan's stories say.) Here in the Far North, nights can be as long as several days, so Jon has long since lost any accurate sense of time. (Though he quietly marvels that he is now capable of marching naked through snow for several days straight without feeling too much strain.)

He simply keeps walking, stopping now and then to let his dragon stretch her legs and forage what food they can.

Starkfire, so named in honor of Robb's sacrifice, is about the size of a cat and covered in scales in varying shades of dusky blue. She is the color of the dawn sky, and Jon decides that it is a sign from the Old Gods, or maybe the two people from his vision, that she will help him avenge Robb and Ned and the others. In this new Battle for the Dawn, she will grow big and fierce and Jon will ride her to war.

She'll help him keep his promise to Robb.

Starkfire chirrups at him, a sound that is quite birdlike, and Jon stops, lifting her up so that he can meet her eyes. Just like with Ghost, a connection is made and Jon knows that Starkfire is hungry and bored. Breaking the connection, Jon sets her down in the snow and says, " _Voraus._ " She chirrups again and gambols off to dig in the snow, searching for burrowing rodents and insects to eat.

Jon is doing his best to train Starkfire in the same way that Lady Lannister helped him and his sister-cousins train their direwolves, but it's difficult when he doesn't have easy access to bits of meat to use as rewards. Still, he's doing what he can, and Starkfire seems to be picking it up quickly. Perhaps even faster than Ghost. Whether that's because dragons are inherently more intelligent than direwolves, or a side effect of Jon being a more experienced warg now, he can't say.

Starkfire hisses just as the night grows darker still, and Jon jerks away from his own hunt for food, staring around in alarm, _Ice_ ready in his hands. It wouldn't be the first time she's warned him of danger. Twice now, she's helped him slip away from creatures that glint like glass in the starlight. (Jon wasn't close enough to make out what they were, and didn't feel the need to find out. No need to push his luck.)

There is nothing around that he can see. No threats, nothing worth hunting. He stays poised for battle for a long, tense moment, but begins to think it a false alarm.

And then Jon feels an unnatural gust of wind, and he looks up.

Hovering over him is an enormous dragon. With dark red and black scales, it is so big and close that it's blotted out the light of the moon. A flicker of movement above and behind it draws Jon's attention for just long enough to make out the silhouettes of two more dragons against the backdrop of a cloud bank, the pair too high up for Jon to accurately judge their size. But if they are anywhere near the size of the one landing ponderously in front of him, well… it's not as if he has a chance of fighting one, let alone three.

Perhaps it will sense his Targaryen heritage and decide it likes him? He can only hope. Otherwise, his best plan is to run and hope it doesn't think he's worth chasing.

The big red-black dragon takes a deep breath, and Jon braces himself to withstand a gout of dragonfire, not sure if his immunity will extend to enchanted flames.

But then Starkfire comes running over, sliding on patches of ice and tripping over her own ungainly limbs, hissing and squeak-roaring all the while. Jon readies _Ice_ , prepared to throw himself into the dragon's jaws if it will protect his hatchling even a moment longer.

The big dragon huffs in a way that almost seems amused and moves faster than Jon thought possible, trapping Starkfire under one clawed foot. And just when Jon is about to launch himself into likely the last attack he will ever make, the big dragon meets his eyes. And Jon falls.

It isn't like warging into Ghost, or even into Starkfire. It is more like the big dragon is warging into _him_ , examining his heart, his soul, and his mind for flaws. Jon gets a sense of wicked intelligence and a flash of a silver haired woman dying in a golden street, and then another, and another, until he is watching the woman's life in reverse. Daenerys, she was called.

His aunt.

She is dead, and her dragons escaped Essos and came to find him. The last Targaryen, even if he doesn't use the name.

Though the enormous dragon doesn't speak in words, not exactly, Jon gets a distinct sense of _You'll do_ before she gives a warbling call, summoning the other dragons down.

Then the dragon promptly ignores Jon, turning her attention to grooming and scolding Starkfire. Jon is sure when he looks back on this moment in a few years, he'll laugh.

Maybe.

The other two dragons land and trill at him, their voices much deeper than Starkfire's. One is green and bronze, and the other cream and gold. Each is only about a third of the size of the big dragon, and when Jon meets their eyes he wargs into them, not the other way around. Their minds are tangled balls of instinct and aggression, with none of the fierce intelligence that make the big dragon so terrifying.

Perhaps there are two types of dragon? From the memories the big dragon showed him of his Targaryen aunt, these three all hatched at the same time, but the red-black dragon is bigger and smarter. Perhaps they're like the bees kept in the gardens of Casterly Rock for their honey and every flock of dragons has a queen that rules the others?

So much dragon lore has been lost over the years. It's as good an explanation as any.

"Daenerys," Jon says out loud. The big dragon looks at him, her sharp eyes piercing him. In a strange way, her stare is a lot like his good-mother's. "I'm not sure what my aunt called you," Jon tells the dragon, knowing that she understands every word. "But I'm going to call you Daenerys, in her honor."

The dragon nods her head, and Jon gets a sense of amused acceptance from her.

He calls the green dragon Tasherys, for she is the same color as his wife's green eye. The white he calls Lyanna.

"Can you take me to Winterfell, Daenerys?" he asks, meeting the dragon's eyes to let her take images of the keep and the surrounding lands from his mind. She gives him a look that adequately conveys how stupid he is for doubting her.

"Sorry," Jon says, bowing to her and then moving to gather up Starkfire and _Ice_. Dany bends down to let him mount her. Looking at his naked nethers and the hard scales of Dany's neck, Jon observes, "This is going to hurt."


	6. The Eyrie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone for reading and reviewing! And special thanks to my bae **madmguillotine** a.k.a. queendanascully for helping me with Cersei's characterization this chapter. You will always be my Lannexpert.

They manage to make good time leaving the Westerlands, but after that are forced to take a meandering route dictated by the movements of the hordes of undead roaming the Riverlands.

 _Without any mountains to provide natural protection the White Walkers and their thralls had a straight shot into the Riverlands, and no doubt will spread just as quickly through the Crownlands and the Reach_ , Tasha thinks, picturing the map of Westeros in her father's study.  _The Vale and the Stormlands will fare about as well as the Westerlands. Between the mountains, the heat, and its position at the bottom of the continent, Dorne may be entirely untouched. The Iron Islands and Dragonstone as well, if these things are unable to cross the sea._

They make an attempt to resupply at Riverrun during one of the increasingly rare periods of daylight, but no one answers their hail and they are loathe to waste what light they have left trying to find a way in. Night comes quickly thanks to the fell powers of the Walkers, and sometimes even a snowstorm is enough to block the sun. They don't want to risk being trapped inside the castle with whatever wights wait to rise, or starved in a siege by one of the hordes wandering the land.

Probability dictates that there are at least some survivors hidden throughout the Riverlands, but Tasha sees no evidence of it.

They still need more supplies before they attempt to traverse the swamps of the Neck, so they make for the Vale, hoping to be able to play hide and seek in the mountains there and find a castle that still has living inhabitants. Ideally the Eyrie, since Cersei and Joffrey rule there.

Tasha chafes at their pace. She feels as if she is racing against a clock, as if any moment may be the one in which Jon is lost to her forever. They made better time when it was just her, Gerion, and Mother. As renowned as Father Jaime (for she has always considered herself to have two fathers, no matter what she calls them aloud) is as a knight, as mighty his body, in the end he is only Westerosi. He does not have the strength, speed, stamina, or hardiness that Tasha and her brothers inherited from their mother. (Tasha wonders at Mother's homeland, what all her people must be like. Gerion posits that Mother's race is the truth behind the legends of the Age of Heroes, and he may be right.)

Added to that, Father Jaime is not in peak condition after keeping Sansa safe in Lannisport, and he is aging. Aging as Mother is not. (But Tasha does not think on that, for she does not like to consider what it may mean for her and Jon.) And yet she cannot blame Father Jaime. When she is reunited with Jon, she won't be leaving his side either.

Adding to her frustration, once they spend something like three months crossing the Riverlands and evading wights and Others in the mountain caves dotted throughout the Vale, Mother begins to slow them down as well. She often has to stop because she is ill, losing the meager contents of her stomach which is dangerous because it could attract unwanted attention, and alarming enough to make Tasha's hair stand on end.  _Mother is never ill._ Tasha cannot remember a single instance of her mother being sick in her entire life. Not once. Nothing that did not involve poison or steel.

So what is it then? What dark sorcery could possibly lay her unstoppable mother low?

Father Jaime and Mother share whispered arguments and long speaking looks, but Tasha ignores them just as she ignores it when they have sex when they think she is far enough away not to hear. (Or at least, Father Jaime may think so. Mother likely knows the true range of Tasha's hearing. Still, Tasha makes no comment out of courtesy. She is the Quiet Lioness and very used to hearing things she perhaps should not.)

When Father Jaime declares that they are going to the Eyrie to take shelter for a time with Aunt Cersei instead of resupplying and pressing on and he will hogtie Mother and carry her on his shoulders if he must, Tasha is certain that Mother is dying and feels the bottom fall out of her world.

**-l-**

They are met at the Bloody Gate by men and women wielding spears and torches. Tasha is glad they decided to approach in daylight as a matter of safety, otherwise they'd likely have been attacked on sight. Daylight or not, they are still subject to having their eyes inspected for the telltale eldritch blue. Father Jaime and Tasha are let in after that, as one of Tasha's eyes and both of Father Jaime's are green. Mother's blue are close enough to the color of a wight's that they refuse her entry until she willingly cuts her palm to show them that her blood pulses with life and steams when it hits the snow.

They are told, as they are led to the main hall of the keep, that the security measures were put in place by Lord Arryn himself after they lost people in the White Walker's initial attack. The Eyrie is faring better than even Casterly Rock under the sporadic attempts at siege, as their habit of throwing people off their mountain through the Moon Door and letting them fall from the Sky Cells means that there are far fewer corpses to rise as wights. Now they keep their gates manned and allow no one in or out without inspecting them for the signs of the Walker's power.

Tasha is reluctantly impressed. It seems Cousin Joffrey is not nearly as much of an idiot as he was last time they met. She wonders how much her mother or her fathers may have to do with that. He wasn't fostered at the Rock… perhaps an agent of Black Widow sent to train him in secret? That seems likely.

She is proven right when Cousin Joff greets them in the secret language.

" _Fury forms the Widow's shield_ ," he tells them in a smooth tenor, his curly blonde locks falling across his forehead. He is quite handsome, tall and broad shouldered, with piercing blue eyes even brighter than Mother's and strong thighs that are shown off by the tightness of his breeches. Combined with his cupid's bow mouth, aquiline nose, and the richness of his clothes, he is almost as pretty as Tasha.

" _And her bite is made of lightning_ ," Mother returns, then smiles one of her practiced smiles.

"Welcome to the Eyrie Aunt Sansa, Uncle Jaime, Cousin Tasha. I offer you bread and salt, and look forward to hearing why you have left your home in the Westerlands at such a trying time. But I can see you must be weary, so I will have you shown to your rooms and we can discuss why you came here on the morrow."

"Thank you, nephew." Mother curtseys as best she can when wearing stained black leathers.

From her position standing slightly to the side and behind Joffrey's seat as lord, the blonde woman who must be Aunt Cersei curls her lip. Tasha has never actually met her aunt before, but knows well from the stories she's been told by Father Tyrion that Aunt Cersei is quite… prissy, would be the kindest term.

She is beautiful. Tasha can see that. She has not aged as well as Mother, but then Mother doesn't actually age so that's to be expected. Despite being Lady Arryn and having lived in the Vale since before Tasha was born, Cersei still wears Lannister red and gold and her surcoat is stitched with rearing lions.  _She must not have respected her husband very much, and had not the wherewithal to fake it._  As new as her marriage to Jon is, Tasha immediately put away all but a few of her Lannister gowns after she was wed and began wearing the trousseau Sansa and Arya had helped her prepare featuring the Pendragon colors and sigil.

Then again, she actually loves her husband. And even if she didn't, he is the blood of the dragon and Tasha has plans. It may not happen in her lifetime, but she feels a certainty that is reinforced by the dragon egg she carries with her everywhere:

One day, the Pendragons will sit the Iron Throne. And they will be wargs and dragon riders through their father's line, and through Tasha they will gain the strength of heroes.

**-l-**

"I can't believe you!"

Tasha stops, then casually moves to sit on a nearby bench and stares out the window, as if she is enjoying the view. She is on her way to Aunt Cersei's solar, as she is invited to break her fast with her aunt while Mother and Father Jaime discuss the purpose of their journey and state of the White Walker Invasion with Joffrey.

"What are you on about, Cersei?"

That is Father Jaime's voice.

"You're fucking her."

"Do be clearer, sister."

"Sansa! You're fucking Lady Lannister."

"And whatever makes you say that?"

"You know what! Don't play me for a fool, Jaime. You've never had the wits for it. She's in with my maester right at this moment. She's pregnant, and has been for several months…. And you're not surprised at all?"

Tasha is glad she's sitting as her knees promptly turn to jelly. Mother isn't dying.  _Mother isn't dying._

"The child is Tyrion's," Father Jaime says immediately, as if by rote.

There is the sound of flesh striking flesh. Likely Aunt Cersei just slapped Father Jaime. (Though it could be the other way around, Tasha can't picture her knightly father striking a woman unprovoked.)

"There's no way that little monster put the babe in her belly. She's been apart from him for too long. So it's yours. I always heard the rumors, but I never thought… You've been fucking her the whole time, haven't you? The eldest, he must be yours. He looks too much like you. The twins too, even if they have eyes like the Imp. We were twins, not he. So how long? How long have you been fucking your brother's wife?"

There is a long pause. Tasha holds her breath, straining her ears. Finally comes the sound of a scuffle, just barely discernable. She can hear a whisper of cloth and a soft thud, and some sixth sense tells her that her aunt just tried to kiss Father Jaime, and he has slammed her into the wall. (Later, she will realize that this level of acuity was unusual even for her senses and marked the beginning of a greater transformation. But for now she just listens.)

"Never touch me again," Father Jaime says quietly, venomously. "Jealousy becomes you ill, sister. If you remember, it was you who turned away from me when my arm was burned. You called me grotesque. You refused to look upon me, let alone touch me. Sansa and Tyrion made me whole again. Sansa and Tyrion love me, despite everything. That you only want me now that you think another woman carries my child shows that you are still that selfish little girl who hated to share with others."

"Jaime…"

"No! We will never speak of this again. The child is Tyrion's."

"Jaime, you're hurting me."

"The. Child. Is. Tyrion's.  _Say it!_ "

"...The child is Tyrion's."

"Good. And Cersei… should you ever hint otherwise, to anyone, evidence may come to light that calls a certain young Lord Paramount's legitimacy into question. I'm sure you know who I mean."

"You wouldn't."

"Jaime Lannister was yours. Your twin. The other half of your soul. Your perfect male self. He would have loved you and followed your every order, your every whim until his dying days. But you threw him away. You threw  _me_  away the instant I became the Lame Lion. And the Lame Lion? He is an entirely different man. One born in ash and green fire, and he is  _not_  yours. And Cersei, it would curdle your blood the things he, the things  _I_  would do for love."

There comes a muffled sob and then soft, hurried footsteps. As if the person wears slippers. They are thankfully moving away from Tasha, growing fainter and fainter.  _I likely won't be breaking my fast with my aunt after all_ , she muses.

The heavier, armored boots of Father Jaime are coming towards her, however. Tasha waits, idly looking out the window as his footsteps grow simultaneously louder and less forceful, indicating he is mastering his temper.

He turns the corner, sees her sitting on the bench and halts, expression wary. He isn't sure if she heard or not then. He and Aunt Cersei were far enough away that a normal person wouldn't have, but it seems Father Jaime remembers that his children aren't exactly normal when he isn't distracted by Mother's naked body.

He straightens his shoulders and continues to walk toward her. Tasha tilts her face up to him when he comes to stand before her, smiling a Lioness smile, eyes twinkling and one dimple showing in her cheek.

"Tasha…" he starts, then stops. His brow furrows.

"I'm told that they still have living ravens here. You should send one to Father, to let him know the joyous news."  _He must know, so that he can claim the child as his_ , is her unspoken message. It wouldn't do for Tasha's new little sibling to be called a bastard.

"Of course," Father Jaime agrees before words fail him again.

Standing, Tasha steps into Jaime's space and embraces him as she hasn't since she was quite small. On her tiptoes, she leans up to whisper in his ear and says to him for the first and last time, "I love you, Papa."

**-l-**

Tasha doesn't see nor hear from Aunt Cersei again until the next day. She is once more invited to the solar, this time for luncheon. Tasha wears a gowns in Lannister red that has been loaned to her and observes the proper courtesies. The fare is less plentiful than is usual, as Joffrey has ordered strict rationing, but it is far more than what Tasha's been subsisting on since she left the Rock.

The conversation, however… The conversation leaves much to be desired. If it weren't for Mother's training, Tasha would have flown across the table and murdered her aunt several times by now. The casual way Cersei disrespects Father Tyrion every other sentence, her disdain for Jon… and the remarks just get worse and more blatant the more wine Aunt Cersei drinks.

The fact that she regards Tasha's mother as a near deity is small consolation.

"Now that it has been decided that you three will remain here until Lady Lannister births the babe, I can help you find a proper husband. It's shameful what that little Imp did, shackling you to a bastard."

Tasha can feel her pulse jump, hear her heart thumping in her ears. She feels hot. But she shows none of this, nodding serenely instead. "Thank you for thinking of me, dear aunt. But Jon is still alive."

Cersei waves a hand dismissively, pouring herself more wine. "No one has heard anything from the North in months. Joff sent ravens to Winterfell once those ice creatures started showing up and received no reply. No, he's dead, my little dove. He had the decency for that, at least."

Tasha breathes calmly and evenly through her nose, and imagines Cersei's face when the day comes that she realizes Tasha married a Targaryen in blood, if not in name. Was that not her aunt's dearest wish as a girl? To wed a dragon?

Tasha smiles. "As you say, dear aunt. Who did you have in mind for me?"

Cersei returns her smile. "Joffrey, of course! I've always planned on a proper Westerlands bride for him, and you're a Lannister from the main line."

Tasha tilts her head as if in thought. "I suppose he would be a step up from a household knight, no matter who Jon's father was. But we are cousins. Don't you think it a bit too Targaryen?"

Something flickers in Cersei's eye before she sniffs. "Your brothers will both be marrying Starks, and they are first cousins through your mother. Which we may have to do something about, now that I think of it. Tying both of them to one house, Great or no, is silly. And now that the North has been swallowed up in the invasion there is little benefit in keeping to the agreement."

"It is my understanding that Arya wasn't originally intended for Clynt, but he's quite taken with her. And my father isn't one to stand in the way of love, adoring Mother as he does. I think he'd let Clynt marry a commoner if that was what Clynt wanted."

Hatred commingled with vicious satisfaction flashes across Cersei's face. Just for a second, no more. Mother calls those little flashes  _microexpressions_. "Tell me of Joffrey," Tasha says, distracting her aunt. "If you mean for me to wed him, I would know of him. What's he like? He seems very competent. I've noticed how well protected the Eyrie is. He must have a great military mind."

Cersei preens at the compliment to her son. "Of course. You will be pleased with my dear little lion. You never knew your grandfather, Tywin, but Joffrey is just as clever as he was. He's taken great pains to keep us safe in these trying times."

"Oh?" Tasha pours Cersei more wine and settles in for a long afternoon of ferreting out the details of the Eyrie's security.

**-l-**

All who know her think that Tasha Lannister is the most like her mother among her siblings. Natasha Romanova born again. She is certainly cunning enough. Beautiful too, and she knows how to use it.

But it is Gerion who follows most closely in Mother's footsteps, so good at lying that not even he realizes that he truly loves Sansa Stark and his affair with Loras Tyrell is a mere spark in the darkness; a fast-burning passion that only endures because of the intrigue that surrounds it. Without that thrill of the forbidden and the long stretches of time between opportunities to see one another, Loras and Gerion's relationship would have extinguished itself long ago. Just as Mother would be miserable without the challenge of balancing Tyrion and Jaime against one another, making sure neither grows discontent - Gerion would bore of Loras without the challenge of them both being noblemen expected to marry.

No, Tasha is not like Mother, though she has learned Mother's lessons well. If anything, she has Tyrion's mind and Jaime's heart.

_It would curdle your blood, the things I would do for love._

So when it is decided that she, Mother, and Jaime will remain at the Eyrie and begin coordinating the war effort from the keep for various reasons such as Mother's pregnancy, the Eyrie having living ravens, and uncertainty as to where Jon is and if he's even still alive, Tasha smiles and agrees and joins her Aunt Cersei in the lady's solar to provide a distraction while Mother and Jaime consult with Cousin Joff.

Then, once she has extracted all the details she can from her aunt and gathered what supplies she can carry, she dons her black leathers once more and waits for daylight. It may seem counterintuitive, but the guards are much more vigilant at night due to the nature of their enemies.

It is easy then, to get close to one of the younger guards by giggling and batting her eyes and asking him about his sword. Easier still to prick him with a needle coated in paralytic poison and stuff him in a storage cupboard once all his muscles go stiff and he falls to the floor. She strips him of his tunic and cloak, pulling them on over her leathers, and makes sure that he can breathe in the position she's left him in. Then, blending in with the groups of smallfolk who have been pressed into service guarding the keep from wights, she makes her way to the gate.

Once it's discovered that she's missing, they'll search the keep. Someone will find the poor guard in the cupboard eventually. And if they don't, he'll regain use of his muscles within a day or so. Long before he would die of thirst.

She leaves nothing in her room save a note written in the secret language that says  _The quiet one hunts north._

Mother will understand the how.

Father Jaime will understand the why.


	7. Winterfell

Riding Daenerys is not quite as painful as Jon feared. The cold bite of the wind does not truly bother him, and there is a place at the base of Dany's neck where the spikes along her spine stop before picking up again between the joint of her wings. It is the obvious place for a dragon rider to sit, and Jon spares a thought to wonder if the ancient Valyrians bred them that way.

So Jon is not bled in the act of riding his largest dragon, something he had thought a distinct possibility. Instead he lies prone along the hard scales of Dany's neck, trying to spread his weight as evenly as possible, arms and legs wrapped as far around as they will go to keep himself from falling. It proves untenable to hold Starkfire and  _Ice_  in this position, so Starkfire rides daintily perched on Lyanna's head, while Dany, being the smartest and thus most trustworthy, carefully carries  _Ice_  in her massive jaws.

Jon's entire front will be one enormous bruise when they land, but his odd positioning will lead to him still being able to father children, which is the important thing.

He isn't sure how long it takes them to reach Winterfell by dragonwing. The constant night makes it difficult to judge time, and it seems like both an eyeblink and an eternity thanks to Jon's relief at no longer fending for himself amongst the White Walkers coupled with Jon's fear of falling off Dany's back.

Once Winterfell is in sight they stay aloft, the dragons circling and soaring, waiting for one of the brief periods of day. Jon doesn't want to risk landing until the Walker's power is at its weakest, and he wants those still in Winterfell to be able to see and recognize him. He is flying with three big dragons and one small one, and well remembers how terrified he was when he first saw Daenerys, even with knowledge of his Targaryen blood. He doesn't want to be mistaken as an invader, not after all these people have likely already been through.

Except when day breaks, there are no people.

There is no one on the battlements. No guards training in the courtyards. Wintertown is silent and still, save for a frozen corpse lying here or there. And the castle itself, Winterfell… it lies partly ruined, walls destroyed in odd places, though for the most part it still stands. Those parts, Jon notes, are places he knows are carved with runes of the First Men.

Dreading what he will find within, Jon asks Dany and Lyanna to land, but has Tasherys stay in the sky as she is the least tired, not having carried anything. He knows the dragons need rest after their constant flight, but he wants one of them in the air keeping an eye out for danger while Jon conducts whatever business he needs to here. He conveys this idea to Dany with a brief warging and places her in charge of the watch schedule so that they can all get adequate rest, receiving a vague feeling of confirmation in return and smoke-filled snort for his trouble.

**-l-**

Jon makes for his old room in search of clothes first, only to realize after he gets there that he's long outgrown anything he had before he left for the Rock. He ends up in Robb's room instead, tears in his eyes and acid in his gullet as he pulls on breeches that are slightly too long and a shirt that is too tight across the shoulders. He follows it with a wool tunic in Stark grey and a leather jerkin he can't fasten. The boots are worn in the wrong places, but otherwise fit fine, as does the belt. The cloak and mantle of bear fur give him comfort, even if he does not feel the cold. He hasn't dressed this way since he went south and found out that he was a dragon, not a wolf. There is a sense of homecoming in wearing Stark colors and furs again.

Even if they belong to his dead brother-cousin.

"Jon Snow, is that you?"

Jon whirls, lunging for where he's left  _Ice_  laying atop Robb's bedcovers. Then he registers the sound of the voice and the fact that as far as he knows neither wights nor White Walkers speak. At least not in a language he can understand.

How long has it been since he's spoken to anyone but his dragons?

The sword in hand, Jon turns to face the doorway. A knot of dirty people stand there, faces drawn with hardship and dawning hope. Jon recognizes a young man with a crude black dagger in hand as a new recruit to Winterfell's guards a few years younger than Jon. Or he was before Jon left Winterfell. He is likely a full guard now. Jon can't remember his name.

But the person who holds Jon's attention, who has survived beyond all odds, is the old woman who used to frighten him with tales of snarks and grumpkins. The old woman who might now know more about how to fight their enemy than any lordly general.

"Yes, Old Nan," Jon says. "It's me." Now is not the time to tell her about earning his name, about no longer being a Snow. Not when he is so tired. Not when she looks so frail and cold.

"Lord Stark? Lord Robb?"

"Gone." Jon's voice sounds empty even to his own ears. "My sisters and Rickon are all that's left."

"Oh no." Old Nan's face crumples, but no tears come. Perhaps she's run out. Perhaps they're frozen. Perhaps she is tougher than any of them. "No… The little lord is gone too. They came. They came and we didn't know yet what parts of the castle would keep them out." Turning to shout at someone in the hallway that Jon can't see, Old Nan calls out, "Tell him what you saw, girl."

There is some shuffling as the knot of people in the doorway rearrange themselves. Jon can see, as he waves in those of them that will fit into Robb's room, that there are about twenty of them, mostly smallfolk who work as servants in Winterfell. That makes sense. All of the fighting men save whatever small force was left to garrison the keep would have died at Last Hearth. And he's already seen that Wintertown is empty.

_We didn't know yet what parts of the castle would keep them out._

At last they are all arranged with Jon sitting on Robb's bed with Old Nan, others taking positions on the floor or leaning against the walls, or standing in the hall where they will be able to see and hear. A girl barely old enough to have flowered and wearing a dirty dress and smudged headscarf stands directly before Jon, her eyes on her feet.

"Tell the lord what you saw, girl," Old Nan orders again, no more gently than the first time. As tired as Jon is, the implications of Nan calling him 'lord' do not immediately come to him. He barely notices, putting it down to her trying to get the girl to comply in a back corner of his mind.

The girl nods and wrings her hands in the skirt of her dirty dress. "The little laird was in the courtyard, havin' his lessons with the maester. He had trouble mindin', wantin' to know when his kin would be back. The maester took 'em outside 'cause he minded better if'n he could have his wolf with 'em." She stops, swallowing hard.

"And?" Jon says, trying to emulate that gentle tone of voice Aunt Sansa uses when she is being Sweet Lady Lannister.

The girl looks up and blushes bright red through the soot on her face when Jon catches her eyes with his. "Then  _they_ came. Smashed the walls with monsters o'ice and shadow, giant spiders and the like. It were awful, it was, the sounds of them tryin' ta crash through. Most places the walls held, but in a few they fell clean down. We was dyin' tryin' to fight 'em, and afore we knew it they was through the holes and all around us. I ran and I ain't ashamed to say it, but I thought to grab the little laird on my way by. I made it to the door and looked back when I realized they weren't followin' no more. Felt I should watch, I s'pose. Least I could do fer the ones fightin' and dyin'. And that's when I saw it…  _Him_ …"

"Go on."

"He were the only one we seen. Not a dead 'un, but  _them_. A White Walker. He had black spikes all 'round his head like a crown, 'cept they was growin' there. He had the little laird's wolf, and afore I knew it the little laird had pulled away and run straight to the Walker. It was so fast, I didn't even know it were happenin' 'til it were too late. The Walker took the little laird and… he did somethin' to 'em. I don't rightly know what, but afore my eyes the little laird turned pale and icy like they is. All the color leached out of his hair, and he started growin' so fast I could see it happenin'. He… he became one of them, m'laird. The little laird is a White Walker."

And before Jon can even process the horror of it, can comprehend that his last brother-cousin is gone, worse than dead, that Winterfell has fallen even if the keep is mostly intact, Old Nan chimes in. "You are the Lord of Winterfell now."

Murmurs go through the crowd of survivors, and then those that are still standing kneel.

"Lord Stark, Warden of the North."

For just a moment, a bare second, Jon exults in their claim. All he ever wanted to be before he left for Casterly Rock was respected as a Stark. And now, if he accepts the acclamation of the people… now he could give Winterfell to Tasha and his children, when before all he could offer was his blood tie to the Targaryens and his sword arm.

But no. No, he will not profit from the misfortune of his mother's family. He will not let people kneel and call him lord while Rickon roams the world as an ice demon, his very soul accursed as far as Jon knows.

He will not make Catelyn Stark's nightmare come true. That was the root of her hatred for him, wasn't it? Beyond being proof of her husband's purported infidelity, she always feared that he would somehow usurp Winterfell from her children.

It is true the Jon is the only male of Stark blood left, but he is not the only Stark. Sansa will be Lady Lannister in time, but Arya… She is to marry Clynt and he is a second son. He could easily take the Stark name and come to the North with Arya once all this business with the White Walkers is through.

That settled in his mind, Jon bids those around him to rise. "I thank you for your loyalty to the Stark blood," he tells them. "But I am not a Stark."

"We don't care if yer a Snow, a Snow has become Lord Stark before!" says one of the men. Jon thinks he might have been an apprentice blacksmith in Wintertown.

Unable to dredge up a smile, even though his lessons with the Lannisters tell him that it would make this revelation go over better, Jon merely gestures to Robb's window. "Have you looked outside?"

The men show no confusion at this seeming change of topic. Perhaps they are as tired as Jon feels. Perhaps they are so used to obeying lords that they don't bother to question him. Perhaps they will do whatever he says, simply eager for someone to be in charge.

"We don't go outside," says a woman Jon recognizes as an undercook. "We burn the dead in the courtyard so they can't come back, but we don't go outside."

That explains the soot on the clothes of most of the survivors, and the strange grey cast to the snow around Winterfell. Jon feels nothing but empty at this revelation, and wonders if he is cold inside now because he can no longer feel it outside.

"Look now," Jon commands, and those near the window obey. A touch of Jon's mind has Tasherys fly by and Dany climb the outer wall so that she is in sight of the family quarters.

There is a round of swearing and one of the younger men goes into hysterics while the woman next to him cries. But Old Nan, whom Jon is beginning to suspect is made entirely of determination and boot leather, is heard above all of them. "My eyes aren't what they use to be, m'lord. Are those dragons?"

"Yes," Jon says, expression blank. His face feels numb, but it can't be, because he is immune to cold. "I'm not a Stark. My mother may have been Lyanna Stark, but my father was Rhaegar Targaryen." He pauses. "I have taken the name Pendragon."

On cue, Lyanna lets out an earsplitting roar. Perhaps it is unwise to advertise their position to the White Walkers, but Jon isn't feeling very wise at the moment. He isn't feeling anything at all.

"Then you're not Lord Stark," Old Nan agrees with Jon. He lets out a relieved sigh. "You're the king," Old Nan continues. Jon's relief is short-lived, as now the people, even Nan, are on their knees hailing him as King Jon Pendragon, the First of His Name, Ruler of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm.

Jon isn't sure if his wife is going to be proud or horrified that he's been accidentally crowned the king of twenty people. He decides not to dispute with them, to tell them that he has no desire for the Iron Throne and he is king of nothing and no one. That is an issue for the future, and the way these people are looking to him now… They want a king, because they want someone to lead them. To save them. To be Protector of the Realm.

Jon will do his best.

**-l-**

The first time he sleeps in his old room in Winterfell (they try to make him take a better room, but if Jon really is the king he can sleep where he damn well wants), Jon dreams of Bran.

" _You have to see," Bran tells him, looking older than Jon remembers. He is almost as tall as Jon now, and walks without a cane. A three-eyed raven perches on his shoulder. "You have to know," Bran continues._

" _Know what?"_

_Jon's voice echoes strangely in the fog of his dreamscape. He looks down and sees he is wearing his old armor, the armor that was lost at Last Hearth, save for one difference. His winged direwolf sigil is now a single white dragon. It looks like Lyanna, a tongue of ruby flame coming from its mouth._

" _What they are. Why you were born," Bran says. And then he points._

_A vision coalesces out of the fog, and Jon sees a man tied to a weirwood tree. Strange beings with green skin and hair that looks like tree roots surround him._

" _He looks like a Stark," Jon says, unaware that he intended to speak at all. It is a dream. Perhaps all his thoughts will be spoken._

" _He is," Bran agrees. "A Stark before they were called Starks."_

_As Jon watches, one of the little green beings stabs the man through the heart with a dagger that glints black. Jon's hand twitches for one of his blades, but he remembers at the last moment that this is a dream. There is nothing he can do to help the man._

_The little green beings step back and the man tied to the tree convulses, his blood watering the roots even as his skin goes blue and his hair turns pale as snow._

" _They made the White Walkers," Jon realizes._

" _Yes."_

" _Who are they?"_

" _The Children of the Forest. They could not fight us when the First Men came, so they created the White Walkers to fight for them. They were made for one thing only: to kill men. They are weapons of ice and death with no will of their own. Or they were."_

" _I don't understand. Why are they attacking now?"_

_Bran gestures back to the vision of the man becoming a White Walker, saying only, "Watch."_

_The man stills, his life's blood run out, his final breath coming out in a long whispering rattle. Then his back arches and he screams, the black dagger in his chest disappearing as black spikes made of the same slick material sprout from his head in the shape of a crown. His eyes snap open, and they are so cold with hatred that they glow with it, like someone plucked stars from the sky and put them in the White Walker's face._

_Those cold burning eyes catch on Jon, and he is struck with an eerie feeling that the Walker_ _ **sees**_   _him._

" _The Children used the Walkers to fight the First Men until the Pact was made at the Isle of Faces. There was peace, and the White Walkers became nothing more than beautiful ice statues that never melted. The Children and the First Men lived in harmony."_

_Bran gestures and the vision of the man becoming a White Walker changes to a beautiful grove of weirwood trees, their carved faces all smiling and happy. Dotted here and there are what look like statues of ice, beautiful things that catch the light and cast rainbows when it hits them just right. They look alive, save for how still and perfect they are._

_Another gesture and the weirwood is burning and the once perfect statues are moving and killing, their icy blades crusted with frozen blood. "But then the Andals came and the Pact was broken. The Children brought the Walkers back to life and started to make more. But there was one thing they didn't realize. They didn't count on the fact that some of their race had mixed with some of ours. The Stark before they were Starks claimed one of the Children as his grandfather. And so when he was captured and used in the ritual to make a White Walker, something went wrong. They had sacrificed their own blood, however unknowingly, and the power of that blood protected him. His will was not erased. No mere weapon to follow the whims of the Children, but a sword without a hilt. And it turned in their hand."_

_The first vision is back, but this time beginning from the point the newly made White Walker opens his glowing eyes. As Jon watches, the Walker frees himself from his bonds and goes after the Children around the weirwood, succeeding in killing two with the sword of rimefrost that appears in his hands before the rest scatter. Throwing his head back, the Walker screams in a language that sounds like cracking ice._

" _He is the Night King," Jon says, sure that the black-crowned Walker can be no one else._

" _Yes." Bran confirms. "He hates all warm blooded things, for that is how the Children designed the White Walkers. The disgust the Others feel for anything and everything that gives off heat drives them to destroy all in their path. They cannot be reasoned with. They were not meant to have reason. But the Night King has the same powers as the Children and a mind of his own. He can create more Walkers. He can control his brethren. He can ignore orders from the Children. And he hates them for what they did to him. And so the Children were wiped out by their own creations, save for a handful who hid in obscurity until recently when they, too, were slain."_

_Understanding hits Jon like a bolt from the blue. "And without the Children to control them, they ran amuck, total annihilation their only goal. Because while he might still have his mind, the Night King is a White Walker. He hates everything but winter."_

_Bran smiles grimly. "And so we come to the tale of the Long Night and the Last Hero."_

" _I remember. Old Nan was right about more things than we ever knew."_

_Bran's smile turns a bit wistful. "Yes. Her tale of the Last Hero was accurate enough, save for one thing."_

_Bran shows him one more vision. The Night King is fighting with a man wielding a sword that seems to shine with sunlight itself, the light of it so bright that Jon can't rightly make out the Last Hero's features, save for the fact that one of his arms looks to be made of living metal. Not until the Hero plunges his Sword of Light through the Night King's chest._

_The Night King falls. All of the wights surrounding the battle fall too. The other White Walkers Jon spots in the distance freeze as they turn back into statues of ice, weapons with no will._

_Then the unthinkable happens._

_The Night King dissolves and the Last Hero doubles over, a crown of black spikes sprouting from his long brown hair._

_Jon turns to Bran as the vision fades, idly wondering if you can be sick in a dream. He determinedly doesn't think of Rickon's fate. "He became a new Night King."_

_Bran looks away, the three-eyed raven on his shoulder cawing. "Whoever kills the Night King becomes the Night King. A twist on the magic that can't be undone."_

" _Then why now!" Jon demands, reaching out to shake Bran. His hands go through his brother-cousin, proving Bran an apparition or trick of the mind, but Jon is not deterred. "Why didn't the war continue if the Last Hero just became the Night King?"_

" _He fought, Jon," Bran says quietly. "He was another with magic blood, far more than the Stark before they were Starks. He fought and through the power of his blood and the strength of his mind he managed to beat back the urges of a White Walker long enough to seek out the remaining Children. He'd been controlled by magic once before, you see. Made to do terrible things. He was determined it would not happen again, so he went to the Children and begged them to put him in an enchanted sleep to protect the world from the wrath of the Night King. He knew he would not be able to resist forever. So he slept. The Wall was built, and the Watch began."_

_Jon takes a deep breath, squeezing his eyes shut and scraping his fingers through his hair. "But then he woke up," he says between clenched teeth._

" _As the number of living Children dwindled their sleeping enchantment grew weaker. Around fifty years ago it broke completely and the Last Hero woke, a Hero no longer. He was the Night King, utterly and completely, and he immediately began preparing to carry out the mission of all White Walkers."_

_Jon laughs, if it can be called that. It sounds more like sobbing, like a wounded animal, a wolf wishing for pack. But no, he's sure it's laughter. If he doesn't laugh, he'll cry, and if he cries he'll never stop._

" _They and their creations are all vulnerable to fire, dragonglass, and Valyrian steel," Bran tells him. "But you and only you must be the one to kill the Night King."_

_That cuts Jon's mad laughter short. (Mad laughter, ha! Perhaps he is going the way of his grandfather, perhaps this whole tortured dream is a symptom of Targaryen madness. He almost wishes it were so.)_

" _Why?" he croaks out._

_That damned raven caws again. "You are the Son of Ice and Fire. The Prince Who Was Promised. It is prophesied, it is hoped that if you are the one to kill the current Night King, the balance of magics in your blood will allow you to remain yourself. Or else…"_

_Jon sees the truth in Bran's face. "Or else I'll simply die. The blood of the dragon will reject the magic of a White Walker and I'll be torn apart from the inside out. There will be no more Night King."_

_Bran says nothing. There is nothing to say._

_Jon thinks of Tasha. Of Sansa, and Arya. Of Gerion, Clynt, and Uncle Tyrion. Of Uncle Jaime's training and Aunt Sansa's tutelage. He thinks of the twenty frightened smallfolk who knelt and proclaimed him their king._

" _Alright," he says, so softly that he himself barely hears it. "Alright."_

_Bran bows to him. Then he turns to walk away, already obscured by the dream fog._

" _Wait!" Jon calls out. Bran looks back and Jon finds himself blurting, "What was his name? The Last Hero, what was his name?"_

" _His name was James," Bran answers, face solemn. "James Barnes, but he preferred to be called Bucky. He came to Westeros from a far away land in an accident of magic, and hated the cold like nothing else."_


	8. Longsister

Tasha sticks to the mountains for the first few weeks of travel. To someone with her training and ability, wights are only truly dangerous in large groups. The mountain paths are narrow and steep, and will force the reanimated corpses to come at her one or two at a time, giving her plenty of warning as few of them can move quickly on a sharp incline. Mostly she is able to dispatch them at a distance with flaming arrows, and counts herself lucky that she hasn't come across any White Walkers who might prove more challenging. But then why should she? They are far more interested in attacking keeps and towns, places with large concentrations of people.

She is just a lone woman on a mountain side.

Eventually she runs out of mountain, and wends her way down to the shore of the Bite. In the distance, just smudges on the horizon, she can see the Three Sisters: Longsister, Sweetsister, and Littlesister, the barrier islands between the Vale and the North.

What she is about to do is a bit mad. But Tasha well remembers traveling through the Neck on that long ago trip to Winterfell, and she knows the swamplands are treacherous even with a guide at the height of summer. Now, in the Everlasting Night, it would be even more so. Passages closed by snow, thin black ice films that hide sucking pools of sand beneath, lizard lions, all the dead who have drowned in the swamps clawing their way up from the muck to wage war on the living… No, Tasha knows she will die if she tries to cross the Neck. And as she is not willing to turn back nor wait around for Jon to find her, her only option is to continue forward.

So she is going to swim the Bite.

She knows her mother did something similar in the past, though she doesn't know the whole tale. Mother always hushed Father Jaime before he could finish telling the story to Tasha and her brothers. But she knows enough to know that she will last longer in the sea than another person might, and she doesn't think the Others have a way of crossing salt water.

So she sets noise traps of brush and brittle sticks to alert her if something comes near and does her best to sleep that night, knowing she will need her strength. It is dark when she wakes, but that is not unusual in these times. Grimly, she eats her remaining store of food since she doesn't have a way to keep it dry while she swims. Then she fills her canteen with snow so that she'll have fresh water when she reaches the islands, takes off her boots, uses the laces to tie them up with her weapons, and wraps the whole thing into a bundle with her cloak.

No more preparations to make, she steps into the waves.

It's freezing. She didn't count on the cold. Though she tries to take it slow, to give her body time to adjust, by the time the water's up to her shoulders she's gasping and using every mental trick Mother ever taught her to manage her instinctive panic. She can feel her heart pounding, her pulse thumping in her ears as she clutches her bundle close in front of her and kicks. She tries not to submerge her head, but the choppy waves thwart her, leaving her coughing and sputtering as her hair is plastered to her face, obscuring her vision.

 _Jon_ , she whispers his name to herself, picturing his crooked grin and his blushes and how appealing he looks practicing shirtless in the training yard of the Rock. Arya thinks Tasha's habit of spying on him disgusting and Sansa thinks it scandalous, though she never says a word when it's Gerion who strips off his tunic...

She keeps kicking long after she stops being able to feel her toes. At some point she loses her bundled boots and weapons, her fingers too numb to hang on properly. She dives in an attempt to retrieve it when she notices, her sluggish mind drawing a comparison to dropping a cloth in the bath. Of course she doesn't find the bundle. The water is too dark and deep.

Her breath is coming shallower now. Her limbs are heavy. Twice, she has to turn on her back and float when she feels as if she'll sink if she doesn't rest. At one point she passes out, only to cough herself awake when she inhales a lungful of water. Her course lists to the side, and she has to force herself to swim at an angle lest she miss the islands completely. As it is, while she started out for Littlesister, the easternmost island, she has drifted far enough that she will make land on Longsister, the westernmost, bypassing Sweetsister entirely.

At last the waves change direction, carrying her toward shore.

When her feet hit sand she tries to stand, but falls to her knees instead. Undeterred with her goal so close, she crawls, dragging herself onto the rocky beach. With a supreme force of will, she forces herself to keep going until she isn't being lapped at by the water anymore. Once satisfied that she won't be dragged back out to sea, she collapses on her side.

Her lips are chapped and cracked with salt. She's thirsty. She can't feel her arms or legs, but her chest is burning. She can't see anything and can't decide if it's still night or her vision going dark. Everything is heavy and she's so, so tired, all her energy leaving her now that she is no longer fighting to stay afloat.

 _Jon_ , she mouths.

Her eyes flutter shut and her heart stops.

For two minutes, she is dead.

As well as Tasha was taught by the Black Widow, she never heard enough of the story surrounding the Ironborn Rebellion to know how much warmer the water her mother swam through was. She never knew that the Lionfish needed Jaime to warm her up afterwards. She doesn't have the background knowledge of biology necessary to understand just how much strain the cold puts on her heart, her muscles, her organs. She doesn't know the terms Cold Shock or Hypothermia.

Had Natasha Romanova tried the same feat under these circumstances, she would have died. Tasha Pendragon does die.

The difference is, Tasha lives again.

Two minutes after breathing her last, her body starts to shake, limbs twitching as a ripple of change moves over her skin, infusing her pale flesh with warmth and color. Muscles that had become lean over months of little food grow strong again, curves once more lush. Her ears shift into points just enough to be noticeable at the tips, and her canines elongate into fangs.

For there is something else that Tasha does not know. Something that even her mother never suspected. Tasha has inherited more than beauty and strength from her foreign parent. Something that did not exist on Planetos until Natasha Romanova had children. It is a quirk of genetics that allows one man to develop superpowers where another would die; one man to become a super soldier where another becomes an abomination; one girl to live to claim the title of Black Widow where all the others succumbed…

The Meta Gene.

Her death serving as a trigger, Tasha is transformed and reborn. And when a group of the smuggling, thieving, slaving scum that rule the Three Sisters and dare to call themselves noble stumble across her resting on the beach and start loudly discussing whether to keep her for themselves or sell her in Essos, she opens mismatched eyes with pupils slit like a cat's and  _ **roars**_.

She doesn't have her bow or her knives, but she doesn't need them. When she springs at the men casually discussing raping her, her fingernails sprout into curved leonine claws.

An enraged, feral howl echoes across the land, the unearthly battle cry followed by an inhuman growl.

The screams of dying men last for days, stopping only when the Sistermen try to hide from the one who hunts them. But they cannot escape. Not from the wild woman who can smell their fear, hear their pounding hearts, run faster than the fastest horse, and move through the shadows like a jungle cat. And no matter what they do, no matter how true their aim, whenever they manage to fell their hunter she gets right back up again, her flesh knitting together before their very eyes.

For the first sennight she exists in a hazy cloud of red, knowing only rage and pain and  _hunger_. A host of newly emerged instincts coupled with the trauma of her reawakening steals her reason, to the detriment of House Longthorpe and its members. And when Tasha's conscious mind emerges once more, she's seen enough of the evil inflicted on the smallfolk by their so called lords that she sees no reason to halt her rampage. It seems that with the Long Night preventing what little oversight the Sisterman had they have sunk even further into villainy.

 _Rapists, thieves, slavers, torturers_ , she chants inside her mind, sickened by the injustice that surrounds her.  _Starving children, beaten women, men worked to death_ , she snarls.  _Murderers_ , she howls, taken up in battle frenzy.

Out loud, she says nothing. Not when they scream. Not when they run. Not when they beg for mercy, offer her gold and jewels, other men to kill, to rape, to feast upon. Only roars and growls pass her lips.

"Demon!" some of the men whisper, jumping at shadows. Others make for their ships, only to find the sails savaged by claws. Still others throw themselves into the sea, hoping to swim for the closest island, Sweetsister, or perhaps a less painful death.

At last, at the end, the only ones left standing on the blood stained sand are the smallfolk who have been so used and abused by their liege lords that they don't lift a hand to help Lord Rolland Longthorpe when Tasha wraps her thighs around his neck and uses momentum and her unnatural strength to snap his spinal cord even as she sends him careening off a parapet of Longcastle.

The smallfolk don't run. A lifetime of being beat down by men no better than pirates has taught them running always leads to worse things. Instead they huddle together before the figure of Tasha, whose leather armor hangs off of her in shreds, barely preserving her modesty. She is covered from crown to sole in blood, both her own and that of others, some of it dry and some still wet. Her hair is matted and flares out around her head like a lion's mane. Only her catlike eyes are free of rusty brown and scarlet red, even her teeth stained from using them to tear out a man's throat.

The people kneel in the dirt of Longcastle's rundown courtyard, some praying, some weeping. She doesn't blame them. She looks the part of a monster. Perhaps she is one. She has spent close to two years now slaughtering hordes of wights, but this is the first time she has turned her deadly skills on living men. This is the first time she has fought with nothing save fangs and claws - the first time she's had fangs and claws at all, an evolution she cannot fathom save to attribute it to her mother's heritage. It is the first time she has run mad, nothing but a mindless weapon bent on death, a sword without a hilt. It is the first and second and twenty-third time she should have died.

It is not the first time she has enjoyed the hunt, has smirked at the sweet vicious thrill of obliterating an opponent, has rejoiced at the challenge presented, and perhaps that is the most monstrous thing of all.

"Be not afraid," she says to the pleading smallfolk. They jerk back from her, perhaps not thinking her capable of speech. "I mean you no harm."

No one moves, and Tasha suppresses a sigh. It would be foolish of them to trust her word after what they witnessed her do, but she is in no mood to coddle them.

"You," she selects an older man at random. He wears rags and a slave collar, which is one of the many reasons she had no mercy on the 'nobles' of this island. Slavery is supposed to be illegal in Westeros, and yet here one stands. He is dark skinned with a scraggly grey beard and wiry hair that sticks straight up. He was a Summer Islander before being taken as a slave then, or maybe from the Basilisk Isles. More importantly he regards her with a steady stare. He is wary of her, but not a gibbering wreck as so many of the others are.

"Yes,  _Keliodi-ryna?_ " he asks after bowing as deeply as he can from his already kneeling position.

"Gather some of your fellows and retrieve the bodies of the slain. They need to be burned before the White Walkers make them rise again. If there are too many to fetch into a pyre, you may burn them where they lay."

He bows again. "Yes,  _Keliodi-ryna_."

"Good man." Turning her attention to rest of the group, who now appear marginally less inclined to run screaming from the sight of her, she singles out one of the hardier looking women. Middle aged and flint-eyed, the woman has cried a great deal less than the others and subtly put herself between Tasha and a group of children, for all the good that would do if Tasha meant them harm.

"You will show me a place I may bathe and help me find suitable armor," she tells the woman. "I will rest for a few days, then I will depart in search of my husband." Turning her gaze to encompass the entire group she continues, "All of you may stay here or go elsewhere as it pleases you. I would recommend staying. All of Westeros is embroiled in a war with the White Walkers of Old, and the sea gives you marginal protection from their wrath."

"Yes,  _Keliodi-ryna_ ," the woman replies, stumbling a little on the pronunciation of the foreign word, slowly getting to her feet and gesturing for Tasha to follow her.

She is put in the Lord's suite, but does not notice. The meagerest guest room at the Rock is grander than the Lord's suite of Longcastle.

**-l-**

Several days later, when Tasha is clean and rested and as well armored and provisioned as she's going to get without waiting for a smith to custom fit her, she prepares to leave. Horses shy away from her now, so she will be heading toward the northern shore on foot. A small fishing boat waits there to take her across the Bite.

The smallfolk meet her at the gates of the run down keep. In the time between witnessing her slaughter everyone who opposed her in what they are calling the Liberation of Longsister (when they think she can hear; it is the Week of Red Weeping when they think she cannot), they have stopped fearing the demon woman and now revere her as a newly born goddess.

"Only gods are immortal,  _Keliodi-ryna_ ," they tell her whenever she tries to disabuse them of the notion. It is a difficult argument to dispute, as not even in the Age of Heroes was there ever a figure who healed so fast as to constantly resurrect if killed in battle. She eventually gives up on persuading them otherwise. They will believe what they will.

"Your Reverence," Jho, the old Summer Islander, addresses her when she stops before the crowd. "We have spoken amongst ourselves and agreed to stay here as you advise. We will swear ourselves into your service and care for your island as best as we can in the hopes that you will return once you have found your husband and free our brothers and sisters on the other two islands."

"It's not my island," Tasha says, but it is a token protest only. She grew up learning the game of thrones at the feet of her parents, and she recognizes a stepping stone towards her ultimate goal of seeing Jon's birthright restored to him. And dear Cousin Joff surely won't begrudge her a few small islands, not when the history of the Three Sisters proves that the Sisterman will heed no Lord Arryn unless made to bow.

Jho shakes his head. "You killed Lord Longthorpe in honest battle. By Right of Conquest, this place and everything on it belongs to you,  _Keliodi-ryna_."

Tasha stares at him for a long moment, weighing his sincerity and wondering just who he was on the Summer Isles to be speaking so eloquently. And then she lets a slow sultry smile take her face, the tips of her fangs giving it a exotically dangerous edge. "That name you call me. It's a dialect that I don't recognize. What does it mean?"

Jho smiles back at her, and his grin is just as bloodthirsty, fangs or no fangs. "It is not a name, but what you are.  _Keliodi-ryna_. Lady Demon Lion."

Tasha's grin widens. She grasps the old man's shoulder with one hand and with the other tilts his chin so that he will look her in the eyes. She can feel his racing pulse. "Once I have found my husband, we will come back here and take Sweetsister and Littlesister for our own."

"You give your word?" Jho croaks through chapped lips and a dry throat, a strange glint lighting his gaze.

"My oath as a Pendragon," she vows. "We always return."


	9. White Harbor

Jon leads his people south, knowing that he can't just leave them in the ruins of Winterfell. Not with the Long Night upon them and so few to protect them from the occasional bands of wights still roaming the North. It's true that the food stores of Winterfell would last twenty people a very long time, but who knows when they may be overwhelmed or how long the winter may last. So Jon sends Dany scouting, since she is the most trustworthy of the dragons, and finds that the Neck is currently impassable when he looks through her eyes. He takes his ragtag band towards White Harbor instead, hoping that there will be an intact ship. He doesn't hold out much hope for the city to still be standing. It's true that every settlement they pass close to yields a few survivors who join them in order to have the protection of the dragons, but he has yet to find anywhere that fared as well as Winterfell with its ancient magic laced walls.

In fact, he orders Daenerys to burn the Dreadfort to the ground when he sees it teeming full of wights. He'd rather make the keep another Harrenhal than leave it to the dominion of the Others. (And if his decision is influenced by his disgust at how many of the shambling corpses were flayed or mutilated in someway, Dany is the only one who knows, and she will never tell.)

He had hoped at first that he might use the dragons to quickly ferry his people to safety, but few are willing to approach the great creatures and only Dany will tolerate anyone not himself near her - and even then she will not allow them to ride. So they follow the Kingsroad as far as Castle Cerwyn, adding six to their number along the way. The older dragons fly overhead, Jon warging with them as needed to keep them in line and give them direction, and Starkfire alternates trotting along beside him with riding on his shoulders. Jon trusts that she will give warning for any danger her kin miss from the air.

Castle Cerwyn yields four more survivors, and a host of wights in black and silver livery. Not wanting to destroy another northern holding if he can help it, Jon sends his people to hide beyond the road with Dany and Starkfire to guard them, sends Lyanna away mostly to keep her from harming anyone she shouldn't, and has Tasherys circle overhead. He has noticed since they started moving that the wights they come across seem to focus on him, as if they can sense the fire in his blood and long to stamp it out. (That is what he tells himself. He refuses to think of his dream-that-was-not-a-dream, of the Night King looking and  _seeing_  him.)

His plan is to stand before the gates and make a racket to draw the dead to him. Once they leave the castle Tasherys will easily burn them all, removing their threat while leaving the castle intact. Then the four survivors - two guardsman, a cook, and a potboy who managed to barricade themselves in the keep's kitchens and use the hearth to hide the heat of their bodies from the wights, known to Jon only because of Dany's keen sense of smell and hearing - will be free to come out.

Only when Jon tells his people to stay put, not all of them do. He finds himself joined by the four most able to fight among them, men he has come to rely on in the past few days. Gawayn: The guard he recognized from Winterfell; Vikon the Blacksmith, Son of Mikken; white haired Ulfgar the Old, who wields a hatchet and a long knife as he was one of Wintertown's butchers before it fell; and the archer Joreg Stagskinner, who is three and ten and stayed behind to take over his father's duties as a hunter and tracker when the banners were called to march to the Wall.

"What are you doing?" Jon asks flatly when the men array themselves around him, their weapons in hand. He doesn't need them here. Tasherys will burn the wights before they get near him, and he need not fear her fire.

But Gawayn levels him with a look of such fierce determination that Jon is reminded of his missing direwolf, Ghost. And Ulfgar, the one least afraid of treating the man he calls king like a pup still wet behind the ears as Ulfgar is old enough to be Jon's father twice over, says, "What does it look like, yer grace? We're guardin' ye."

Jon hefts  _Ice_  in his hands. "I don't need guarding," he protests. He is likely the safest person here, between his training, the dragons, and his own strange gifts.

Gawayn snorts, twirling his sword once to loosen the muscles in his wrist. Jon knows the motion well, and misses his old blades. But he will wield nothing but  _Ice_  until he is able to put it in the hands of Arya's husband. Let Clynt learn an entirely new fighting style.

"'Course ye need guardin'," Ulfgar answers Jon. "Yer the king, ain't ye? We might not be proper knights, but we're the best ye got at the mo'."

The others nod along to Ulfgar's words, and it is then, looking at them, that Jon realizes what he didn't before. When they left Winterfell he ordered everything useful that they could carry to be packed up and the people to help themselves to the fine furs once worn by the Stark family. He'd thought it was coincidence, if he considered it at all, but now he sees: Gawayn, Vikon, Ulfgar, and Joreg are all wearing thick fur cloaks. And those furs are all white.

Jon has a Kingsguard.

He sighs. "I suppose if I command you back, you won't listen?"

"Not even a little!" Joreg says, smiling brightly. He is a happy soul, laughing and japing even in the face of death, though his eyes tell of the hardships he has faced.

Jon resists the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. "What's the point of being king if none of you follow orders?"

"Looking pretty and smelling like a lady?" Gawayn offers.

The others snicker quietly as Jon's cheeks flame red. No matter how still he can keep his face, Aunt Sansa was never able to train blushing out of him. Not that he ever tried very hard. Tasha likes his blushes.

"Yes, yes, very funny  _Ser_  Gawayn," Jon says to shut them up. "You know the plan. When I signal Tasherys, you  _will_ run or I'll given you a reason."

"So long as you're right behind us, your grace," Vikon agrees in a way which is not agreeable at all.

Jon purses his lips, but accepts that is as much of a concession as he is likely to get and he doesn't want to stand around arguing all day.  _King my frozen arse,_  he thinks to himself.  _I've been ordered about more often and by more people as a king than I ever was as a squire._

The plan goes off without a hitch. The wights are burned. The four survivors gladly join Jon's band, though only after being made to bend the knee and swear fealty to Jon by Old Nan, who seems to take grand pleasure in coming up with long-winded ways to introduce her king.  _But then she always did have a flair for the dramatic, with the way she used to terrify all of us with her stories._

Even more irritating, Ulfgar (who seems to be the Lord Commander of Jon's makeshift Kingsguard that no one asked him if he wanted) produces two white fur cloaks from somewhere and inducts the two guardsman from Castle Cerwyn. Jon gives into the inevitable and learns that their names are Creg and Ondrew.

They sleep in Castle Cerwyn to get out of the cold for a night or so (as best Jon can tell with how irregular sunlight has become) and then they leave the Kingsroad to follow the White Knife river toward White Harbor. A few more stragglers join them as they march over the rough terrain. The have the look of the Mountain Clans, or maybe even wildlings, but at this point Jon doesn't care. They aren't wights, and that's enough.

One is a woman with a sweet face and sharp smile, and a spear longer than she is tall. She will not kneel, but does swear an oath to follow where Jon leads and joins the Kingsguard, bringing the number up to the traditional seven. Her name is Osha. Jon doesn't say a word. At this point he's resigned himself to the fact that his so called subjects will do what they like as regards serving their king. Oh, they look to him for leadership and protection, yes. But as soon as one of them gets something into their heads about preserving his dignity or guarding him or what have you nothing he can say will sway them, not even threats of flogging.

They can probably tell he doesn't mean it.  _Tasha would be better at this. She is certainly more terrifying._

He misses her.

Osha is full of tales of running ahead of the invasion of wights, living off the land and watching as castle after town after keep fell before the tide. She's survived by making sure it's not worth it to come after her. Jon takes her at her word, not only because she works hard and keeps a sharp eye out for the people under their care, but because her reports match what he sees through the eyes of his dragons.

So he is surprised when they grow close to their destination and Daenerys sends him images not of a gutted port, but a city whose gates have been reinforced by anything and everything available, grim faced northerners manning the walls.

Jon calls Dany back, knowing that she was seen by the alarm that has been sent up among the city's defenders. He doesn't want to terrify whoever has managed to hold White Harbor, so he brings his people out into the open, though out of bow range, and waits to see how they respond.

He doesn't have to wait long before a ladder is lowered over one of the walls and a man carrying a flag of truce comes out to treat with him.

"Why are you here?" the giant of a man asks, his red beard and hair stark against his layers of black clothes, a bright spot in a world covered by snow.

Jon's lips twitch at the man's bluntness. It makes him feel eloquent in comparison. He moves forward to speak to the man, his Kingsguard following a few paces behind in their white furs.

"I seek a ship to take my people south. No more. No less."

"Ain't any," the man barks. "Only a little one left, and the lady already sent it south to tell that fat shit what's happening. So you can fuck right off."

Jon feels his eyebrows climbing his forehead. This man is either insane or brave to the point of stupidity.

"Are ya mad?" Osha shouts at the nameless envoy. "You see he's got fuckin' dragons."

The man makes to retort, but Jon holds up a hand before things can devolve any farther. "May I speak with your lady?"

The red haired man growls to himself, sounding almost like a bear, the truce flag twisting in his hands. Osha glares fiercely at him and he grimaces at her just as fiercely. Jon waits, remembering his lessons at Casterly Rock. Often times silence and an impassive face can be more potent than any words.

"Tormund, what's taking so long?!" someone shouts from the walls of White Harbor.

"Fine!" the now named Tormund huffs. "But the dragons stay out here, and you can only bring three people with you." He jerks his thumb at Osha. "And she's gotta be one of 'em!"

"Those terms are acceptable."

Jon turns to select who will accompany him, and finds that Old Nan and Ulfgar have already selected themselves. Jon knows better than to fuss at this point, so he simply tells everyone that Gawayn is in charge and wargs with Dany to tell her to keep her sisters in line.

"This is dangerous, your grace," Old Nan says as they follow Tormund to the ladder that will let them climb White Harbor's wall.

"We'll be fine," Osha insists.

Jon agrees. Even if these people turn out to be hostile, his dragons are just a thought away. He'll only need to keep himself and his companions alive long enough for the denizens of White Harbor to realize they have bigger problems. Three much, much bigger problems.

**-l-**

When Jon hears Tormund speak of his lady, he doesn't quite know what to expect. Perhaps one of the Manderlys is still alive. Wasn't there a daughter called Wylla? Or given Tormund's appearance and manner, perhaps the lady is a Wildling Chieftan who has conquered and held New Castle against the Others. Perhaps she is a merchant who was in port and took control in the chaos.

None of these suppositions are correct. Instead, when Jon enters the Merman's Court he is greeted by the sight of a stern faced girl of no more than ten namedays sitting upon the Merman's Throne. She is dark of hair and brown of eye, and has the typical long face common amongst northerners, though her cheeks are still plump with youth. There is a scar bisecting one of her arched brows that looks to have been made by a dagger that is still red and puffy, indicating the wound is relatively recent. She wears clothes not too dissimilar to the ones Jon took from Robb's room, though hers are tailored to her small stature. All in all, if it were not for the cold look upon her face and hypnotic quality of her stare, she would resemble nothing so much as a doll.

And yet she is here, ruling in the Merman's Court. A girl of ten able to make grown men and women obey her.

"Who are you and why are you here?" the girl asks in a surprisingly commanding voice, just as blunt as her man Tormund.

Old Nan answers before Jon has a chance.

"Your ladyship, I present to you King Jon Pendragon, First of His Name, Ruler of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Protector of the Realm, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, Firewalker, Wightbane, and Rider of Dragons."

The girl's face doesn't so much as twitch. Instead she looks Jon over, her dark eyes raking over every inch of him in a way that makes him feel naked. He is reminded strongly of his good-mother.

After a long moment the girl says, "I am Lyanna Mormont, and I have no time for the begging of southron kings."

Jon bristles. "I am not here to beg, my lady. And I am no southron."

She remains expressionless. "You might have the looks of a northerner, but there is more to it than dark hair and pale skin. It is honor and history, and from where I'm sitting you have neither. Tormund has already told you that we have no ships, so I repeat: why are you here?"

"You dare speak so to the Dragon King?" Old Nan demands, looking very much like she'd enjoy taking Lyanna Mormont over her knee.

"What care I for dragons?" Lyanna asks of Old Nan before settling her piercing gaze back on Jon. "My house was all but destroyed when they went off to fight wildlings and found White Walkers instead," she tells him. "With only sixty-two fighting men, I brought my people here for safety, gathering what survivors I may, staying always one step ahead of the dark forces hunting us. I saw dead rise and slew the corpses of my fellow lords. I trekked through the Wolfswood, and the Rills, and the Barrowlands and found all their so called warriors killed or fled. I found the Neck impassable and choked with wights, and I led the charge to take White Harbor back from the damned. I rebuilt the walls and salvaged ships to defend and feed my people and sent messages to the Fat Stag only to be patted on the head and told to stop listening to tales of snarks and grumpkins. So many lords craven, so many warriors dead, and yet... here I stand." She raises a single eyebrow, stretching the angry red scar tissue. "So tell me again, summer child, why I should care for dragons or kings. House Mormont bends the knee to only one lord, the Warden of the North, whose name is Stark."

Lyanna Mormont does not stand from her seat upon the Merman's Throne. She does not raise her voice. And yet Jon feels as if she does, he feels every inch of her glare, sees every moment of the picture she paints in his mind, and suddenly he understands how it is the Young She-Bear is able to command a city at only ten namedays. His skin breaks out in gooseflesh.

"I am a Stark, milady," he says before he even knows that he is speaking at all.

Lady Lyanna takes a breath and leans back in her seat. "Oh?"

"I have never carried the name, but the blood is mine. I was born a Snow, the bastard son of the woman you were named for, Lyanna Stark, and Rhaegar Targaryen. The blood of the First Men flows through my veins. But it isn't just about the blood." He takes a deep breath, his voice growing stronger as he gets his thoughts in order. He has never been one for speeches and manipulation, but he does not need to be. This is no speech. No manipulation. This is the truth and he cares not what she thinks of it.

"It is about the man who claimed me as his son to protect me from the wrath of Robert Baratheon, risking his whole house in the process. It is about my sisters, Sansa and Arya, who wait for me in Casterly Rock. It is about my brothers Bran and Rickon, both lost to the winter in their own ways. It is about my brother Robb who had to slay Eddard Stark to prevent him from rising as a wight, a brother who died at the Last Hearth Stand, and a promise I made to him."

For the first time there is a spark in Lady Lyanna's flat black gaze. "And what promise is that?"

Jon smiles and it is a terrible thing, a look in his eye that would alarm anyone who had ever set eyes on Aerys the Mad. He  _snarls_  and outside the city walls his dragons roar. " _ **I will burn them all**_."

And now, at last, Lyanna's icy mask breaks and she smiles a matching bloodthirsty smile. Then she looks beyond Jon and addresses someone over his right shoulder. "I see why you agreed to follow him, Osha."

Jon whirls to face his guardswoman, already reaching for  _Ice_  lest she be about to spear him in the back. He finds her standing there grinning ear to ear, her body relaxed in such a way that it's obvious she's telegraphing she has no intention of attacking him.

"You know Lady Mormont, Osha?"

It is the diminutive lady who answers, drawing Jon's attention back to the dais surrounded by carved mermaids at the end of the hall. "I sent Osha to assess you, Jon Pendragon. There are wargs among my people, and they warned me of your coming and told me of your deeds. I care not for your name or your dragons. That is not enough to make a king. I wanted to know what kind of man you are."

Jon's jaw clenches, but he ignores the outraged noises Old Nan is making and forces himself to let go of the hilt of  _Ice_. "And what kind of man am I, milady?"

The She-Bear stands and, though a child, she somehow seems twelve feet tall.

"You have never carried the Stark name. And yet the wolfsblood is strong within you, and aye, the blood of the dragon too. And so I say you are no mere man: you are my king from this day until your last day."

And with that declaration ringing in the air Lyanna Mormont steps to the side of the Merman's Throne and kneels. "Take your seat, King in the North."

**-l-**

After settling his people and his dragons into White Harbor and attending a long meeting with Lady Mormont and her advisors, Jon expects to sleep like a rock.

He does not.

He tosses and turns, thrashing beneath the fine furs that adorn the bed in his suite, sweat glistening on his skin for the first time since he was reborn in fire. His hair lies in a matted, tangled mop across his pale brow, and if any were to look upon him in that moment they would see his lips part in a silent cry… or perhaps a howl.

_He is a wolf and he is running. DeathSmell everywhere, no food, keep running. There is a smudge of green ahead of him, a forest on the horizon. He has to reach it. There will be good prey there, AliveBlood RedMeat._

_But he arrives and it is no forest, no hunting ground. It is a garden, and all of the flowers are dead, the petals shrunken and black, leaves coated in frost. A rose bends beneath the weight of the icy dew and a heavy foot tramples it into the frozen ground._

_Jon looks up and sees a DeadOneNotPrey standing on the crushed flower. He runs._

_The garden is dead, no prey there, no life. He needs somewhere warmer. Somewhere the ice can't go. He turns until he sees a flaming sun high above a field of sand. He takes off, his easy lope covering the distance in a ground eating pace. But just when he can feel the sun on his skin, his paws warm for the first time since he started running, he is confronted with a dragon._

_He tries to speak with it, and finds it will not talk with him, only open its mouth and roar with the voices of a thousand men. Jon tries to evade, but the dragon is too fast._

_It swallows him in a single gulp._

_Only when he falls down its gullet, he discovers the dragon is no dragon. Not fire made flesh, but a puppet of wood and silk. And within the dragon is a host of men in gold armor._

_Jon tears a hole in the mummer dragon's belly, and the golden men come pouring out, scrambling to form up ranks so they can steal the sun for their own. Jon growls and sets his feet, ready to defend his source of warmth._

_But there is no need. For the sun defends itself, hatching like an egg to reveal an enormous Red Viper that strikes at the golden men, poisoning them and maiming them and squeezing them until the sand is streaked with blood. Another false dragon with a bellyful of men - in multiple colored armor this time, and with white hair - launches itself from an island to the north of the sun-egg that birthed the Red Viper, but it is chased by a stag with flaming antlers that runs through the sky, lightning and thunder booming in its wake._

_The second dragon is gored before it can reach the warm land Jon has found, and the men it carries fall into a sea churned by storms, and there they drown._

_But the Storm Stag does not stop coming. It enters the warm land, and stands before the Viper. Jon watches, unable to move, though he wishes to, to show them they are not enemies, to point out that they both fought against the false dragons._

_But it is not to be._

_He can't say which one moves first, but suddenly the Viper is striking and the Stag is charging and they are rolling end over end in the wet, red sand, the Viper wrapped around the Stag with its fangs in the Stag's throat, and the Stag's flaming antlers through one of the Viper's eyes._

_Together they convulse._

_Jon wills their bodies to burn, fearing that any moment the ColdDeathNotPreyOthers will arrive, but no matter how he howls and blows, no fire comes._

_And yet, the dead remain dead._

" _They have not yet got that far," comes a familiar voice._

_Jon turns to see Bran standing behind him, and suddenly he is a person again, standing on two feet in the armor that he lost at Last Hearth and something heavy resting on his head. He reaches up to remove whatever it is and finds it will not budge, so explores it with his fingers instead._

_It is a crown of dragon teeth. It cuts his hands._

_Jon huffs and says, "Are you really here?"_

_Bran smiles an infuriating, mysterious smile and says, "I am everywhere. And nowhere. A thousand eyes and one."_

_Jon has no idea what Bran means by that, but senses he won't get a clearer answer, so asks a different question. "What was all that? Did you send me some kind of vision? Is this really happening?"_

_Bran moves to stand next to Jon, looking down at the entwined bodies of the Viper and the Stag. "Yes. It is happening. It happened. But I did not send you these portents. You are a greenseer through House Stark, and granted dragon dreams through the Targaryens. Twice Blessed, or Twice Cursed, depending on the point of view." Bran smiles again, and for a moment it is like they are back in Winterfell, brothers teasing each other in the practice yard._

_But it does not last._

" _The frozen rose," Jon says. "The Reach has fallen to the Others."_

_Bran nods. "It has."_

" _But then what of the false dragons?" Jon demands. It feels as if someone has poured boiling water over his head. He has thought himself a worthless Northern bastard for most of his life, far longer than he has known the truth of his parentage, and yet he finds the idea of someone pretending to the Targaryen legacy infuriates him as almost nothing else, the dragon blood within him inflamed. The arrogance, the presumption, the sheer, unmitigated_ _ **gall**_ _of it! And on the heels of that inferno of wrath comes a cold determination, an implacable drive for_ _ **justice**_   _that feeds on the heat in his blood and hones it into a chilling, killing edge._

_It tames the dragon raging within him, but in some back corner of his mind Jon is frightened by himself, by this ruthless logic that takes his mind tripping down every lesson he has ever had at the feet of the Lannisters, that details all the ways he can make these false dragons wish they had never dared to don scales. That is, if any of them still live._

_Jon is the Son of Ice and Fire, and the ice frightens him, for it reminds him far too much of the Night King. And yet neither does he wish to be the next Mad Dragon. He can only hope that the two elements that war within him will remain at war, and thus keep him from either extreme._

" _A Blackfyre claiming to be a Targaryen," Bran explains, jolting Jon out of his spiral of dark thoughts. He blinks and shifts uneasily from foot to foot._

" _The boy was raised to believe he was your elder brother Aegon," Bran continues. "He landed in Dorne with the backing of the Golden Company, thinking to find allies among his putative kin. But the Martells did not believe the ruse, and you see the result before you."_

_Jon looks down at the body of the Red Viper. At the very least Oberyn Martell is dead._

" _And the stag? One of the Baratheons?"_

" _Stannis," Bran confirms dispassionately. "When the Targaryen Loyalists of Dragonstone went to join the false Aegon, he gave chase. And once they were routed, he would not believe the Martells were innocent of rebellion, given that Elia was the mother of the true Aegon."_

_Jon wants to scream. To kick at the sand. To draw his blade and hack at the corpses lying before him. He wants to burn and beat and bleed and conquer and cry._

_He does none of those things. He merely stands, every inch of himself shaking, opening and closing his fists, clenching his teeth so hard he can hear his jaw creak. He will not give in to the fire in his blood. They will never tell stories of King Jon the Mad._

" _It gets worse," Bran informs him in that same flat tone that makes Jon want to punch him._

Of course it gets worse _, Jon thinks._ I honestly don't know why I expected anything different.

_Jon does not say this aloud, but Bran laughs anyway._

_Bran gestures before them and the sands of Dorne vanish, revealing instead a pathway of smooth stone. The Kingsroad. "King's Landing is under siege. Come with me if you wish to stand witness."_

_Jon doesn't want to._

_He goes anyway._

**-l-**

_A few steps onto the Kingsroad and they are transported to the chambers of the Small Council. Jon has never been within them, but he recognizes them from the descriptions given by his good-father and good-brothers. It helps that King Robert is around a table with a handful of other men, one of them being Ser Barristan Selmy, moving around tokens on a map. His queen, Margaery Tyrell Baratheon, stands in a corner of the room with her brother Ser Loras at her side, both of them dressed for travel, though Loras still wears the signature white cloak of the Kingsguard. In Queen Margaery's arms is a tightly bundled babe, likely the Crown Prince Steffan Baratheon._

" _No!" King Robert roars out, making Jon jump and return his attention to the men gathered around the map. Bran wanders over and examines the tokens placed on the map just before Robert knocks them onto the floor with a sweep of his arm, quite a few of the stone figurines flying through Bran as if he is not there. Then Robert walks through Bran as well, a disturbing sight, and Jon resolves to stay out of the path of any in the waking world, lest they go through him too and make him feel like a ghost._

" _I will not flee!" Robert declares._

" _Your grace," the fat man in the robe that Jon thinks may be the Master of Whispers begins, but Robert will hear none of it, cutting the man off with a loud, "Bah! Have someone fetch my hammer!"_

_The queen hands her baby to Ser Loras and steps up to run her hand down the king's arm, drawing his attention and throwing back her cloak so that her bosom is revealed. Jon's eye is drawn for a bare moment, but then catches himself. Now is not the time, and Tasha's are much better besides._

" _My king," the queen simpers. "The city is lost. We must retreat for now so that we may gather your armies and then return to rout the fiends just as you conquered the dragons years ago."_

_Jon sees what the queen is doing. Tasha used to do it to him all the time until he figured it out and told her she didn't have to manipulate him to get him to listen. It took him an embarrassingly long time to catch on, however. Though in his defense, she was beautiful and he was seven and ten at the time._

_For a second the king's eyes fix on the queen's displayed chest, and it seems that she will have her way. But then Robert looks up and declares, "Eunuchs and women! What else can I expect but cravens from eunuchs and women! Dorne's in revolt, Stannis fucked up like he always does and got the Stormlands mixed up in it and let the prancing Red Viper poison him, half the Small Council's missing, the fucking dead are walking around thanks to some foul sorcery, probably caused by some Targaryen magic shit left lying about, and you want to_ _**run away** _ _?!"_

_He turns away from the queen, brusquely pulling his arm out of her grasp. "You can take your sword swallowing brother and run back to your grandmother's skirts if you like, but I will show those who dare to rebel against my throne that_ _**Ours is the Fury** _ _!"_

_Before the queen or anyone else can respond to that, the entire keep shakes with a sound of cracking stone and groaning wood. The king and the Master of Whispers are thrown off their feet, the queen flung into the table, and the Grand Maester collapses, rubble falling down on top of him ensuring that he will not get up again. Only Ser Barristan and Ser Loras keep their feet, Ser Barristan setting his stance and riding the tremor out, and Ser Loras curving his body around his nephew to protect him._

" _What the bloody hell was that?!" Robert demands from the floor. "Have these wights brought siege engines?"_

_The Master of Whispers stands and goes to the door, nonchalantly stepping over the dead Grand Maester to do so, signaling someone on the other side. "I will know in a moment, your grace."_

_In the minutes they wait the keep shakes again, and this time there is a horrible grinding sound and a howl of wind. The sounds of fighting finally penetrate the stone of the castle, people screaming and dying, metal clashing, and, outweighing all the other sounds, a hundred thousand voices raised in terror._

_A small boy runs to the door and the Master of Whispers bends to let the child speak into his ear. Then he goes pale. Pale as snow, as white as milk._

_Turning, the eunuch - Varace? No, Varys, that is his name - wets his lips, but when he opens his mouth no sound emerges._

" _Get on with it man!" demands the king, who seems to have decided to simply stay on the floor until everything stops shaking._

_Varys clears his throat and tries again. "The shaking, your grace, it is… The dragon bones, the dragon skulls you had removed from the throne room at the end of the Targaryen reign and stored in the catacombs. They have come to life and are in the process of assembling themselves into a massive undead dragon."_

" _I knew it!" Robert spits before Varys can say more. "Targaryen treachery! Can't have the throne, so they're taking out the whole Seven damned continent!"_

_The queen and Varys make eye contact and it is clear, to Jon at least, that they don't believe the Targaryens have anything to do with the dead coming back to life, but they aren't going to say that to the king._

" _We must get you and the royal family to safety, your grace," Ser Barristan says quietly._

_Robert turns to stare at him, his mouth already open. But then Bran steps up beside Robert and touches him on the temple with one finger. And Robert's face clears._

" _No," Robert says in an even tone. He stands, and for the first time in Jon's memory he looks like a king. It as if the years of drinking and feasting and unreasonable temper melt away at Bran's touch, and before Jon stands the man who was the beloved friend of Ned Stark. "No," Robert repeats. "It is me the fiends have come for. Usurper, they call me. If I leave, they will follow." He steps forward and lays his hand on Ser Barristan's shoulder. "You have served me long and well, even when I did not deserve your loyalty. And so I am going to ask for one last service, if you will give it."_

" _My sword is yours, your grace." Barristan pledges, his light blue eyes as bright as any White Walker's._

_Robert smiles, and it transforms his face, makes him young and handsome and valiant. "Take my queen and my son and get them somewhere safe. You and Ser Loras. Keep them alive."_

" _What of you, my king?" the queen asks, her eyes flicking between the king and Ser Barristan, and Ser Loras who still holds her son._

" _They will come for the Iron Throne. I will be there waiting."_

" _But, your grace-" The king moves to embrace the queen, shocking her into silence._

" _I am not a good man," Robert says into her hair. "I have not been a good husband, or father, and I dare say not a good king." He tilts the queen's chin up, meeting her eyes. "Raise our son to be better. Make sure he lives a good life so he doesn't end up like me - hoping that a good death can make up for it."_

" _Your grace, I swore a vow. I am to protect you," Barristan protests._

_Robert laughs a jolly, joyful laugh, and then he pins Barristan with a stare that could stop a dragon. Reaching up, Robert plucks off his crown of golden antlers and holds it out for Ser Loras to take. The younger Kingsguard looks to his sister for permission and does so, holding the swaddling prince in the crook of one arm and the crown in the other. Robert nods in satisfaction, and then solemnly says, "The king is dead. Long live the king."_

_With that, Robert Baratheon the Usurper, Robert Baratheon the Whoremonger, the man who beggared a nation and spent his life in mourning for a woman he never really knew, takes his final walk to meet his glorious death, a true king at last._

_They all remain frozen in a tableau, staring at the door Robert just passed through for the last time. Then the keep shakes again, and there is what is unmistakably a dragon's roar._

**-l-**

" _We must make haste," Varys says. "I can get us out through the secret passages."_

_That snaps everyone into action._

_Varys opens one of the chamber walls by pulling on a sconce, and ushers the rest of them through. Ser Barristan leads the way, a torch in one hand and his sword in the other. Varys goes next, giving Ser Barristan directions in hissed whispers. The queen follows, the prince and crown in her arms, and Ser Loras brings up the rear, his sword at the ready._

_They move quickly through the tunnels, Jon amazed at how sure Varys is in his whispered directions. Jon already feels lost from the dizzying amount of twists and turns, but feels lead in his gut as the latest tunnel empties out into the catacombs beneath the Red Keep and the bones of nobles past begin to assemble themselves into skeletal warriors._

_Ser Barristan fights, but his sword is neither dragonglass nor Valyrian steel. Every wight he puts down reassembles itself and gets back up again, their empty eye sockets glowing like sinister stars in the darkness. "Go!" Barristan shouts once he realizes the hopelessness of the battle. He tosses his torch to Loras, who catches it. "I'll cover your retreat."_

" _Lord Commander," Loras protests, only for Selmy to cut him off._

" _I swore a vow, as did you! Go! Protect the king!"_

_Loras tightens his jaw and nods, his face pale and grim, and begins ushering his charges around the edges of Barristan's never ending battle to get to the tunnel across the room. The path that will lead them out of the catacombs. The queen hesitates, her eyes wet and her lips pressed in a tight white line. "Seven bless you, Ser Barristan," she calls, just as Loras herds her away._

_With the torch gone, the room goes black save for the eyes of the wights._

" _I will protect the king from harm or threat," comes Barristan's voice in the darkness, drawing the wights' attention. "I will take no wife, and father no children." There is a shattering of bone and two spots of eldritch blue light go out. "I will obey the king and keep his secrets," and another falls to the ground. More lights come, signaling more skeletons assembling themselves. They surround Barristan in a circle._

" _The king's honor shall be my honor."_

_Ser Barristan fights, boldly, bravely._

" _And in the end…"_

_Ser Barristan falls._

" _Give your life for his." Jon finishes the Vow of the Kingsguard for the man who breathes no more._

_Then he leaves, not wanting to see this once great man rise as one of the creatures who killed him._

**-l-**

_When Jon catches up with Ser Loras and the queen, they are outside the keep's walls and heading for the docks. Varys is nowhere to be seen, either killed or fled. It could be either with the spymaster. In the distance, the monstrous form of the misshapen bone dragon can be seen pulling down buildings and trampling the populace. Lacking flesh, it can neither fly nor breath fire, yet it is still somehow capable of thunderous roars._

_Loras all but drags the queen through the streets, her cloak flung over her shoulder to hide the prince in her arms. Loras gives no quarter to either the living or the dead, simply striking out at anyone who gets too close, heading as fast as he can for a small vessel moored at the docks called_ The Royal Rose _. A pleasure ship for the queen, perhaps? It is a good choice on Loras' part, as far as Jon can tell from his limited knowledge of sailing. It's large enough to weather storms, but not so large that it will be impossible to get underway without a full crew._

_They are almost to the gangway when a wight leaps out in front of them, his black and gold doublet stained with blood that shows he was stabbed through the heart._

_Loras looks at the bloodless face and glowing eyes and cries, "Lord Renly! Please! You were my knight master! My friend!"_

_But the wight shows no recognition. It just lunges, sword outstretched._

_Loras pushes the queen away and moves to engage, catching the wight's clumsy stroke on his blade. "Get on the ship!" he barks at his sister._

_The queen obeys him, the wight of Renly Baratheon unable to get to her with Loras dancing around it, distracting it. Once she is safe on the vessel, Loras turns his attention to trying to incapacitate the wight, or at least disengage long enough to get onto the ship without the wight following._

_But it is not to be. No matter how clumsy the wight's swordplay is, the fact of the matter is that Ser Loras is tiring and the wight is not. The wight does not feel pain. It does not struggle for breath. It is not blinded by blood or sweat._

_Loras makes a mistake, does not parry in time, and the wight catches him in a gap in his armor, cutting into his thigh and rendering his leg near useless. With a desperate cry that is echoed by the bone dragon methodically tearing down King's Landing, Loras shoves the wight away and off the pier, gaining some time as the reanimated corpse splashes into the water._

" _Loras!" the queen screams over the wailing cries of the infant prince._

 _Loras tumbles forward, but catches himself by digging the point of his sword into the wood of the dock. Blood streaming down his armor, he staggers and then hops toward_ The Royal Rose _, his right leg dangling uselessly._

_Slowly, agonizingly slowly, Loras gets himself onto the ship. Then he splints his leg with his ruined sword and bandages the wound with his cape. The queen puts the prince in a crate she lines with blankets inside the captain's quarters, and then helps Loras hobble around, following his instructions to get the ship underway._

_It is only once they are away from the dock, out in the bay that Loras seems to relax, pulling himself up to sit on one of the ship's railings. Between the shock of events and the blood loss of his wound, he is so pale as to be nearly translucent._

" _We made it," the queen smiles at her brother, though it doesn't reach her eyes._

" _Yes." Loras doesn't try to smile, merely looking at his sister with an intensity that is unusual for him. "There are navigation tools in the captain's cabin. You're smart, you'll be able to figure out how to use them. You've always been so smart, Margaery."_

_The queen frowns. "Loras?"_

" _Try for the West or the Vale," Loras continues. "You can get to both by sea. The Vale is closer. If you invoke my name, the Lannisters will help you out of Gerion's love for me."_

" _What do you mean, 'invoke your name'?" the queen demands, her voice sterner than Jon has ever heard it. "You'll be with me."_

_Loras gives a ghastly smile. A gallows grin. He gestures to his leg. "I'm losing too much blood. Without a maester… I will die, and then you and Steffan will be trapped on the ship with a wight."_

" _Loras, no," the queen begs, tears running freely from her eyes at last, her face screwed up in an ugly mask of sorrow._

" _You'll be fine," Loras says, and his smile is real now. Filled with love and truth. "You're a queen. My queen. Always."_

" _Don't," Margaery croaks out, reaching toward him. "I need you."_

" _Tell Gerion… Tell him to be happy."_

_And then Loras flings himself backwards over the rail of the ship, the weight of his armor dragging him below the inky depths to rest at the bottom of the bay._

_Jon's eyes burn, his head and jaw aching._

**-l-**

_Jon thinks he will wake after witnessing Loras' sacrifice, that his nightmare will be over, but it is not to be. He feels a hand on his shoulder, and in a blink and a haze of white he is standing in the throne room of the Red Keep with Bran at his side, a lump still clogging his throat._

_He is disoriented for a moment, but once he realizes he's been pulled into yet another vision instead of waking in his bed, he moves to strike Bran, to rip himself away. But he merely passes through Bran, his brother-cousin apparently able to decide whether or not he's solid._

_Jon gives up, chest heaving._

_Bran gestures for Jon to turn around, saying only, "He has seen you. Now you must see him."_

_The Night King and Robert are fighting before the Iron Throne, the White Walker smirking as he plays with the overweight mortal. Jon turns just in time to see Robert's hammer break and the Night King's sword pierce into the flesh Robert's meaty shoulder._

_The man's body freezes solid at the touch of the Night King's rhimefrost blade, and then a single heavy blow shatters him into a hundred pieces of icy flesh._

_The Night King ascends the steps to the Iron Throne, turns, and sits. And then he looks right. at. Jon. He smiles and he is handsome, and that is somehow worse than the horror of Robert's shattered corpse. The Night King says something in his cracking, hissing language, and to Jon's horror he_ _**understands** _ _._

_**Soon** _ _, the Night King says, staring into Jon's eyes with his orbs of piercing blue, utterly devoid of life, of love, of anything but malice and determination._ _**Soon.** _

_Jon stares up at the White Walker sitting on the Iron Throne, and something snaps into place inside of him._

_The Baratheons are dead, reduced to a single babe that will likely not survive the sea voyage to the Vale. Jon is the last of the Targaryens._

_That is his throne._

_He is the king, not just of twenty people, or two hundred, or the North. He is the Son of Ice and Fire. He is the Rider of Dragons. He is Jon Pendragon, First of His Name, Ruler of the Andals, the Rhoynish, and the First Men, King of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm._

" _James Barnes," Jon addresses the Night King, unsurprised that the creature shows no recognition of the name. "You are sitting in my chair."_

_As if the words are a spell, the apparitions Jon has come to think are Lyanna and Rhaegar appear on either side of the Iron Throne. As one, they touch it. And the Iron Throne, the throne forged by Aegon the Conqueror with dragonfire and the weapons of his enemies, erupts into a blaze of glowing orange, as if every inch of it is once more bathed in the flames of Balerion._

_And the Night King screams._

**-l-**

_Remember, the dragon must have three heads._

Jon wakes with a start and a yell to a pair of glowing eyes hovering over him. Thinking it a wight, he flings himself to the floor, scrambling for the knives he's secreted around the bed, only to find them missing. His heart pounding he shuffles backwards to put some distance between himself and the creature, only to hear a tinkling laugh that certainly comes from no wight.

That is when he registers that while the pair of eyes glow in the dark, only one is blue.

The other is green.

"Tasha?" Jon whispers, hardly daring to hope. It could be a trick of the enemy. He could still be dreaming.

" _Yes, beloved, it's me_ ," Tasha says in the secret language.

Jon's heart stops. Then it tries to climb out of his chest through his mouth while simultaneously thumping wetly in his feet and rushing in his ears. He feels dizzy. All the tension going out of his body, Jon collapses onto the stone floor.

"Tasha," is all he manages to say, something trickling over his cheeks. Sweat, from his visions mostly likely, even if it does seem to be coming from his eyes. His chest feels heavy and he can't get his jaw to work.

Warm hands - warmer than he remembers, but perhaps it is because they are now in the midst of winter - pull him up and get him tucked back into the bed. He leans into every touch, hardly able to believe he's awake. In fact, he is probably still dreaming.

" _You need better guards,_ " Tasha says. Jon can hear cloth and metal shifting, and already he is hard and ready at the mere thought of his wife undressing. " _No one even knows I'm here except for the dragons, and they let me through after the big one talked inside my head._ "

" _Dany talked to you?_ "

" _If Dany is an enormous black and red dragon, yes._ "

Jon sighs, and doesn't know if it's happy or sad. " _I have so much to tell you._ "

" _And I you. But first…_ " Tasha slides beneath the furs and presses her body to his.

Jon knows now. His wife is back with him.

He is happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **The Kingsguard Oath:** The full text of it is never given to us, so I have cobbled one together based on quotes from Barristan Selmy and Jaime Lannister.


	10. Casterly Rock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Casually raises this fic from the dead.* Happy Father's Day to the Night King, I guess.
> 
> Also: I am short of time right now, but I will start replying to reviews as I am able. Thank you! :D

The Lannisters have always seemed perfect to Sansa Stark. Both to the girl she was when the elegant family first visited Winterfell and the girl has become in her years at Casterly Rock. From their fine manners to their even finer clothes they have always seemed grand and wondrous and everything that is spoken of as being noble in ballads and tales. Even their hair is red and gold, no drab brunettes among them. Lord Tyrion's stature could be considered a large mark against them, and yet to see him with his wife, to hear his wit, to see how his children adore him… Yes, Sansa was convinced the Lannisters were perfect, and she extremely lucky to be betrothed to the eldest son and befriended by the only daughter of the main branch of said House.

Then came the Long Night and those horrible days spent hiding in a smithy with Ser Jaime. She learned then that what she saw on the surface of her soon to be family was just that - skin deep. Aunt Sansa, whom Sansa has always striven to emulate, is not her true aunt at all, but a woman from a far flung land where people have strange powers. Her name isn't even Sansa, but Natasha, and she shares her bed with both her lord husband and his brother, often at the same time.

It is not, Sansa thinks in the most secret corner of her heart, that she cannot see the appeal. Lord Tyrion is wise and gentle and kind, and quite funny and sweet when he likes a person. Ser Jaime is tall and handsome and strong and there is something boyish about him. An eagerness to please. Yes, Sansa thinks, she understands the desire very well. But to actually act on it baffles her. How could Aunt San- Lady Natasha do such a thing to her husband? Would she be so sanguine if Lord Tyrion also had a lover?

Sansa gets no opportunity to ask any such questions, as while Gerion escorts her back to Casterly Rock, Tasha, Lady Natasha, and Ser Jaime disappear into the wilds to find Jon and bring him home. (Sansa lights candles for them in the sept every night. She can't allow herself to believe that it's already too late. That to find one man in this chaos is impossible. She can't think they have thrown their lives away for nothing, for that will make it true somehow. So she prays.)

She considers asking Gerion, or even Lord Tyrion, about what she has learned, but decides against it when she considers the look on her love's face when he adamantly declared Lord Tyrion to be his father. Whether he is more incensed about the implication he may be a bastard or that his father is routinely cuckolded by his own brother, Sansa isn't sure, but she is wily enough now after her years of tutelage in the great game to know it is a sore subject. So Sansa does what she does best. She smiles and makes sure everyone is as comfortable as possible and twitters about as if she has no idea of what is happening in the world outside the Rock's walls. It forces those around her to pretend as well lest they upset her 'delicate sensibilities,' stealing an hour here and snatching a few minutes there where they let themselves laugh and put their troubles aside.

And while she does this, she observes. She observes that Arya has known more of the truth of the Lannisters far longer than Sansa has, and that the younger Stark sister misses Tasha like a limb. At least Clynt is able to commiserate, for Tasha is his twin and never before have they been so long apart. As Sansa watches, the second Lannister son and Arya grow closer and closer, leaning on each other to fill the hole Tasha has left behind.

She observes that Lord Tyrion loves his wife and children deeply. It is no act, the way he gazes over the battlements with longing writ upon his face. The way he smiles at his remaining children and makes sure to see each of them at least once a day. She is flattered to be included in that number, knowing the Starks would not have treated a Lannister ward as well. Not when they couldn't even accept Jon, who was their own flesh and blood.

( _Is_ , she corrects herself. Jon is still alive. He has to be.)

Lastly, Sansa observes that Gerion, her betrothed, is preoccupied with something. Though he still smiles and treats her with every courtesy, he is more distant everyday, warmth lacking in his eyes, his smiles empty things. Theirs has always been a courtly love, but Sansa has always thought it was because Gerion was catering to her preferences, knowing how she enjoyed chivalry and the dance of etiquette.

Now that she knows the Lannisters are not perfect, Sansa wonders.

Does Gerion hold any regard for her at all? Or is he paying lip service to a maiden he finds as lively as a doll and about as interesting, all in the name of the great game? Does he love another, and is that why he is so distant? Or is he simply weighed down with the concerns of the Westerlands, which are no small thing at the moment, given the that the dead walk and they must ration their food without knowing when they will be able to get more.

It is probably that, or concern for the members of their family outside the Rock, Sansa concludes after some thought. With how Gerion feels about his mother playing Lord Tyrion false, he would not do the same to Sansa, his future wife. His honor - a facet of him that she has concluded is real and true down to his very bones - will not allow it. (And it is very reminiscent of Sansa's own mother, the disgraced Catelyn, to hold such suspicions. There is madness in her blood. Sansa won't let it consume her.)

So instead of pressing him, Sansa focuses on doing what she can to relieve his burden. Leaving Lord Tyrion and Gerion to worry over the Westerlands as a whole, Sansa turns her attention to the Rock itself. With Lady Natasha gone and Tasha gone with her, only Great Aunt Genna Lannister is left to manage the household, and she is getting on in years. So Sansa steps up to claim the duties of Lady Lannister as her own. Aunt Genna huffs at her, and goes over Sansa's every decision with a gimlet eye, but she allows herself to be usurped purely because Sansa will be Lady Lannister in truth one day.

Lady Natasha's other duties that Sansa has only recently discovered, those of the Black Widow, are a bit beyond her, Sansa will readily admit. Thankfully Clynt and Arya have stepped into that capacity, spinning their webs while Gerion and Lord Tyrion rule and Sansa minds the castle.

It is only a scant month or so after her rescue from Lannisport when she is summoned to Lord Tyrion's study and thanked for her diligence in her duties and informed that in light of the circumstances she will be wedding Gerion immediately in a small ceremony. With half the family who knows where and what seems like all the world at war, they must act to secure the ruling line with as many heirs as possible.

It is not the grand wedding that she has always dreamed of, but Sansa is not a little girl anymore. She may now be a Lady Lannister, but she was born a Wolf of Winterfell, and she has the steel of the wolfsblood within her. So she raises no fuss when her wedding turns out to be a simple one witnessed only by family and what servants wish to attend. She utters no complaint that her wedding feast is hardly worthy of the name, not when winter is upon them. And upon her wedding night she offers her body and her heart to her beloved without reservation, and prays to the Mother that she will swell with child soon.

Gerion is attentive and considerate of her in their bedchamber, but even there he seems distant from her at times, holding her close as if she is the most precious thing in the world one moment and miles away though she is still in his arms the next. If she did not know him so well, she would never be able to tell the difference.

"I am glad to have you, Sansa," he whispers in her ear one night when he thinks her already asleep. (Or perhaps he knows she is awake but wants her to think he doesn't. Sansa sees now that one can never tell with Lannisters.) "Never doubt that. You can't know what it means that you have loved me without falter from almost the moment we met. Sometimes I think you are the only one in the world who loves me so."

She notices that he says nothing of loving her in return and her heart breaks a little. But men, even men raised by Lady Natasha, can be peculiar about such things, so Sansa does her best to put it from her mind and continue on as she always has. Lady Knight Brienne shadows her faithfully as she moves through the Rock's halls, glad the castle is so enormous for it keeps her from feeling cooped up now that it is no longer safe to venture outside the walls.

They recieve word from the Vale that Lady Natasha and Ser Jaime and Tasha have arrived there and are guests of Gerion's cousin Lord Joffrey Arryn. Like the Rock, the Eyrie is built into a mountain and so is better protected from the eldritch forces arrayed against them than the seats of the other kingdoms. They begin trying to coordinate a defense.

The next raven brings word that Lady Natasha is with child. Gerion's face turns black as a storm cloud and Lord Tyrion's mouth goes slack before he pastes on a smile as empty as any of the ones Gerion offers to Sansa. It takes her an embarrassingly long time to realize that they are displeased not because Lady Natasha is with child and away from the safety of the Rock, but because the timing is wrong for the child to be Lord Tyrion's. Ser Jaime must be the father then, unless Lady Natasha's morals are even looser than Sansa realizes.

But Lord Tyrion is a kind man who deeply loves his wife. He gives no indication beyond that first moment of shock that he even suspects the child of not being his.

Sansa finds herself wishing sometimes that she was born earlier and not so silly as a child, so that she could be Tyrion's wife instead of Gerion's, if only to know what it feels like to be loved so well. She would be a good and faithful wife to him, just as she is to Gerion though she increasingly thinks that Gerion regards her as a chore rather than a companion.

Then she scolds herself for having such horrid thoughts, and goes to pray to the Mother and the Maiden for guidance. She sews clothes for Lady Natasha's new babe that the child will never wear since Sansa has no way of sending them before the babe outgrows them, but it makes her feel like less of a wretch. (Less like Catelyn the Mad, who scorned Jon for his supposed bastardy and encouraged her children to do the same.) Someone will need the clothes eventually, so the effort and materials shall not be wasted.

Clynt is delighted at the possibility of a new sibling, sharing Tasha's strange attitude toward the Lannister brothers both being involved with Lady Natasha, regarding both men as a father. Arya cares not at all, though she knows.

"Not my business, is it?" Arya says blithely when Sansa tries to subtly gather her sister's thoughts on the matter.  _A strange attitude for a spy to have_ , is all she can think of her sister's thoughts. But then she has already admitted that while she has come far from the girl she once was, she is not even close to being an acolyte of the Black Widow. Not the way Arya and Clynt and especially Tasha are. ( _And Gerion_ , whispers a voice inside that she ignores.)

Sansa misses Jon. Targaryen blood or not, he is even more forthright that she is and even less capable of the games these lions play than Sansa. It would be nice to have at least one person around who doesn't make her feel like an oblivious dunce.

(She isn't stupid. She isn't. She knows that. It's just that Lord Tyrion and Gerion are geniuses and Clynt and Arya are both naturally possessed of a certain sly cunning that Sansa has to work at. She'll match them one day. She's learning all the time.)

Gerion continues to be surly and disagreeable over the news of Lady Natasha's latest babe, at least in private, but Sansa finds it almost a relief. A Gerion who is sour and hurt and short tempered is preferable to one who offers her empty smiles. For the first time since Lannisport, he is present and  _real_  in his dealings with Sansa, and it makes for such a nice change that she doesn't care one whit that he's being a boor. She never would have thought that she would cherish her husband's frowns more than his grins, but she is increasingly coming to value ugly truths over pretty lies. No matter how unsavory, she would rather know. If her husband is a brooding complicated mess of a man beneath the courtly masks he wears, that's fine so long as it is  _true_.

When the news comes that Tasha has hared off into the wild, still determined to find Jon, Sansa is unsurprised. Tasha is the most like Lord Tyrion of all her siblings. It makes sense that she would love Jon the way Lord Tyrion loves Lady Natasha.

**-l-**

Clynt and Arya grow even more codependent, making up stories about the grand adventures Tasha must be having and the pranks they are going to play on her for leaving them behind. Lord Tyrion starts drinking more than is perhaps prudent and writes letters back and forth with Lady Natasha and Ser Jaime, trying to choose a name for the new babe. Or at least that's what the letters say on the face of it. Sansa would not be surprised anymore if there was a code hidden somehow in the missives, discussing things she cannot even begin to guess at.

When the child is born she is reported as being Cersei Lannister come again, emerging from the womb with silky golden curls already upon her head. Lord Tyrion announces the news at dinner one evening, and reports with tear filled eyes that the girl's name is Tyria. That Ser Jaime insisted upon it.

Sansa does not think she will ever understand.

Gerion takes the news strangely. He stops being surly in Sansa's company and tries to return to his courtly ways, but is still more present than before. It feels, this time, as if he is really trying, honestly and truly, to love her. The first time they lay together after the news comes is frantic and wild and fast and wonderful. It is passionate - something Sansa hadn't known was missing from their previous couplings. Gerion always made sure she was satisfied before spilling his seed within her, but it was a courtesy he was performing. A duty he was completing to the best of his ability. A polite, routine act.

This? This is  _hunger._

It's amazing, how large the difference is between the two things. The same actions, the same bodies, the same people, and yet so far apart in feeling and sensation that they could be across the Narrow Sea from each other.

Overwhelmed, Sansa weeps and doesn't know why.

"It isn't anything you've done," she assures Gerion when he hushes her and holds her close, stroking her hair. His touch is gentle, but his fingers calloused, strands of her hair catching on the roughened skin. "You haven't done anything."

Perhaps that is the truth of it. He hasn't done anything. He is not cruel, but he does not love her.

Sansa knows she has no real cause for complaint. Gerion has never been malicious nor taken another woman to his bed to her knowledge, and that is more than many highborn women can say of their husbands. It is just hard, to be so surrounded by people so desperately in love and not be one of them.

Gerion sighs and kisses her eyes, then her nose, then her lips. "I don't deserve you, Sansa," his whispers against her neck, his red hair mingling with her own.

Sansa's silence is damning.

**-l-**

Sansa's first babe is born a few months after the fall of King's Landing. They receive news of it from the Vale after Dowager Queen Margaery shows up there clutching the blue body of the infant prince. The little one miraculously makes it to the Vale, but dies soon after he and his mother are taken into Lord Joffrey's protection. The queen offers to marry Joffrey and so make him a king, but Sansa rather doubts that the Lannisters will allow such a thing when all the Baratheons are dead and Tasha is married to Jon, who has a better claim to the throne than anyone else thanks to being Rhaegar's son. Not that it matters one way or another since the Iron Throne is probably little more than scrap metal now, based on the accounts she has heard of the siege.

Lady Margaery (Sansa doubts she is still considered a queen, nor will she ever be one again) includes a separate letter for Gerion. Sansa doesn't know what it says, but that night Gerion lavishes attention on her and their newborn son, Tybolt Lannister, Second of his Name. Gerion's gaze is tender and his expression both sorrowful and yet unrestrained in a way it never has been with Sansa before. And when she puts their son to bed for the evening, Gerion gathers her close and weeps into her bosom, his ragged voice saying, "Thank all the gods for you, Sansa. Thank all the gods for you."

Sansa would like to think that Gerion has finally warmed to her because she has borne him a son. That he is able to love her at last when he realizes the treasure she has given him, that he is so enthralled by Tybolt's scrunchy red face and equally red hair that he can't help but see the woman that has been standing before him, just waiting to be noticed. That he can't stop himself from adoring her when he sees the perfect babe they made together.

But Sansa knows now that Lannisters are not perfect.

She retrieves the letter from the hollow table leg where Gerion keeps all his most important personal missives, the place that he thinks is secret but was shown to Sansa by Tasha several years ago. (And now she wonders, does Gerion know that they know? Does he plant false notes for them to find? You can never tell with Lannisters.)

Lady Margaery's handwriting is florid and even enough to belong to a scribe. Her name and the former titles she clings to stand out at the bottom, the letters heavy with flourishes. The only other word that leaps out in such a way is the name of Lady Margaery's brother, 'Loras,' and it stands out for the opposite reason. It is the only place where the penmanship is less fine, the letters shaky and the ink blotched. Sansa recalls that Ser Loras is Gerion's dearest friend outside of his family and folds the letter back up again, clutching it in a white knuckled grip, though she is careful not to wrinkle the page.

Ser Loras is likely dead based on the way his sister writes his name. Whatever else the letter says, it will not make him alive again, nor change the past. (Lady Catelyn would read it. Jealous and angry, she would read the letter and then maybe even confront her husband, depending upon what it said.  _Is Margaery Gerion's ladylove? Does he have a bastard? Did Loras act as a go between to help them hide their affair?_  These questions would prey on Catelyn's mind, and she would read the letter. Short sighted pride. There is madness in Sansa's blood, seeping through her veins.)

She decides that in this one instance, she does not want to know.

Gerion loves her now, or is beginning to. Whether his feelings have anything to do with whatever is contained in the letter is immaterial. Whatever his connection to the Tyrells, they are all dead now save Margaery and it is unlikely the two shall cross paths often, if they ever do at all.

Sansa knows that Lannisters are not perfect, but Gerion loves her now.

She will let it be enough.

**-l-**

The first news they have of Jon and Tasha comes not by raven, but on dragon wings. Sansa is in the nursery with Tybolt, who at six months already has a strong grip and suckles robustly at her breast, his blue eyes wide. He looks more a Tully than a Lannister, but that is only to be expected given that both of his grandmothers are Tullys, or pretending to be. He has started to develop a distinct personality and currently loves no one more than his Grandfather Tyrion, to Gerion's chagrin. Sansa just smiles when her husband grouses about being usurped from his rightful place in his son's esteem. It is just more proof to her that their boy takes after his father, for Gerion lights up in just the same way when Lord Tyrion enters a room.

When Tybolt has had his fill, Sansa fixes her dress and settles him down on a rug by the fire. In these troubled times there was no wet nurse to be had, every woman needing every drop of milk for their own babes. Sansa is glad. It is an experience not to be missed.

Lady pads over and snuffles at Tybolt, then curls around him. Sansa smiles, trusting that her faithful direwolf will look after her son as if he were the wolf's own. In fact, sometimes she fancies she can even hear Lady inside her head referring to the babe as "pup" and "brother," but of course those are just fanciful imaginings.

Lady cuddles Tybolt sweetly, letting him rest against her flank, his chubby fingers buried in the wolf's fur as he babbles at his canine friend. It is then that Sansa hears the tromp of booted feet and shouted orders along with panicked yelling. Clynt bursts into the nursery and scoops up Tybolt, tersely commanding her to follow him to one of the safe rooms hidden in the walls throughout the Rock. Sansa doesn't bother to ask him why, she just goes, snapping out " _Wache_!" at Lady as she stands to follow her good-brother.

Sansa hides alongside her son with Clynt to guard her for several candlemarks, ears straining for the sounds of battle. Tybolt is bundled in a basket with Lady on watch beside him so that Sansa's hands are free to hold the daggers she learned to wield from Lady Natasha. She never appreciated the skill being forced on her until this moment, resenting being made to do anything the girl she was saw as unladylike and unfamiliar with being the one who struggled while Arya was heaped with praise for her natural ability. But now, hiding in a safe room, wondering if she will be called upon to defend her babe with the blades in her hands, Sansa can only give thanks to Lady Natasha and her wonderful strange ways.

Arya comes to get them when things have been deemed safe again, but does not explain anything, instead leading Clynt and Sansa to the hidden war room in the family wing, Tybolt back in Sansa's arms and Lady trotting along behind them next to Arya's Nymeria.

When the door opens Sansa can hardly believe her eyes.

Jon and Tasha are standing there. They look strange and feel stranger, as if there is an air of expectation hanging around them, making the air thicker. But they are still themselves, for all that Jon's gotten broader and more solemn and looks somewhat windblown and sharp, like a sword that has been honed, and Tasha has slit pupils and claws like a cat.

In a world of myth and monsters, Sansa barely bothers to be puzzled.

"Sansa," Jon smiles at her, Tasha echoing him, revealing that she has fangs as well. It is exotically beautiful, the way Tasha now looks like a lion merged with a person. It is probably something that happens from time to time in Lady Natasha's home country given the stories that Gerion recites to Tybolt at night, saying they are part of his secret heritage. Wasn't there something about a man who becomes a green giant when angered? And another about a man with a metal heart and armor that he brought to life?

Claws and fangs don't seem that strange by comparison.

Tasha is thrilled to meet her first nephew, and Tybolt is not afraid of her at all. Perhaps he has inherited the bloodline's strength and senses from Gerion, and can tell that Tasha is his aunt and will not hurt him? They won't know for sure until he is old enough to perform some of the feats that only Lady Natasha's brood are capable of.

When everyone is seated at the round table that dominates the room, Sansa learns that the reason for the panic a few hours ago is that Jon and Tasha arrived on the back of a dragon and that three others accompanied them. Daenerys the Black, Tasherys the Green, Lyanna the White, and Starkfire of the Dawn.

Jon looks rather sheepish. Tasha smugly announces that rather than a winged wolf, the Pendragon sigil will henceforth be a single dragon rampant.

The rest of the evening is devoted to a recount of their doings since Jon left the Rock nearly three years ago.

**-l-**

"And so then we returned to the Three Sisters and liberated the other two islands as I promised and installed Jon's Northern subjects there where they will be somewhat safe. The boats we cobbled together wouldn't have made it much farther than that in any case." Tasha concludes. She is the Lady of the Sisters now, having been confirmed in the title by Lord Joffrey when she and Jon stopped in the Vale before continuing on their way to Casterly Rock.

And Jon…

Jon is the king.

Already the North and the Vale have sworn to him, and there is no reason that Lord Tyrion would refuse him the Westerlands when Tasha is his queen. The Riverlands and the Reach have fallen, the Crownlands are destroyed, and the Stormlands and Dorne are in chaos. No one has heard from the Iron Islands, and hopefully no one will until this mess is long over. Jon is king of the only people who matter now, and will have to conquer and resettle the rest of the kingdoms once the Long Night has ended.

It sounds so simple.  _When the Long Night has ended_. But for the first time it feels simple, feels possible in a way it didn't before. Jon has four dragons, and he and Tasha both possess powers straight out of the Age of Heroes.

"The dragons are the key," Jon agrees with Lord Tyrion as they make plans to find the Night King so that Jon may slay him. (And only Jon may, he has been sure to emphasize, stating that anyone else who tries will meet a fate worse than death. Sansa believes him.) "But they can only go so far before I lose control of them, so we can't split them up, and they won't let anyone but me and Tasha ride them, and Tasha only if she rides behind me. I had one of the wargs among the wildings who follow me try, but without the protection offered by the blood of the dragon she went mad."

They are all silent at that, some studying the maps that have been spread out across the table, some perusing letters that Jon and Tasha have hand delivered from their family members in the Vale. Lord Tyrion is alternating between the maps and a charcoal drawing of Lady Natasha holding Ser Jaime's daughter Tyria in her arms.

" _The dragon must have three heads._  Rhaegar Targaryen was big on that according to the Widow's old records," Arya says to Jon, breaking the contemplative silence. She is idly cleaning her nails with a dagger. Sansa knows better than to believe the innocent picture. Arya could put a knight's eye out through the slit in his helmet at twenty paces with that blade. "And Bran's been wittering on about it in my dreams, so I reckon it's important now that I know you dream about him too." Arya tosses the dagger, catches it, and then between one moment and the next it seems to vanish from her hand. "You're the only one with blood of the dragon, so the blood of the wolf will have to do. I'm your cousin and a warg. Might make a difference."

"Arya," Jon starts to protest.

"Shut it, lest you want to wait around until you've got two kids old enough to ride," Arya commands before he can get any more words out. No one else is foolish enough to gainsay her, though Sansa would like to. Out of concern for her sister, if nothing else. (Jon said the last warg went mad. The Tully madness that waits for Sansa sleeps within Arya too.) But there is a reason that the agents of the Widow's Web refer to Arya as the Bitch of the North, a name that Sansa's sister is inordinately proud of.

By the next evening Arya is the white dragon Lyanna's rider, and if she is more aggressive than before, slinking from room to room with predatory grace and demanding that all her meat be served charred, aggressive is not the same thing as mad. It is a small price to pay, to have a second dragon rider on their side.

 _But_ , Sansa can't help but despair,  _the dragon must have three heads._

**-l-**

No one suggests that Sansa try to tame one of the dragons. If it even occurs to anyone to have her try, they do not let on. Sansa is not offended. It's not as if she's a warg like Arya.

( _Pup, hello pup. Play, play, soft pup_ , she imagines Lady saying, seeing her son in her mind's eye.)

War councils are had. Plans are made. Weapons are forged and sorted and sharpened. Sansa attends her duties, caring for her son and running the household, closeting herself with Aunt Genna to inventory their remaining foodstuffs and try to cobble together rations for an army. ( _The dragon must have three heads._ ) The dragons have brought in a good amount of meat at Jon and Arya's direction, which is a boon to be sure.

And every night after Arya takes a dragon for herself, Sansa dreams that she is Lady, and Lady is sitting before the big red and black dragon, the one named for Jon's Targaryen aunt, and the enormous creature is looking back, her scaly lips parted to reveal the wet darkness within her gullet.

The dragon tilts its head and for the first time since they began, Sansa's dream shifts. She watches as a silver haired woman - little more than a girl really - weeps over the insensate body of her once mighty husband. Feels her sorrow as she places the misshapen body of her stillborn babe on a pyre. But before the flames can catch the child's hair turns red and his eyes Tully blue, and then further still until they burn like a wight's.

 _Only death can pay for life_ , comes a woman's voice.  _You must choose who._

 _Not Tybolt,_ Sansa thinks, jerking awake.

Still in her night dress, her thick Lannister red robe her only concession to propriety, Sansa reassures Gerion that she is only going to check on Tybolt and slips out of the bedchamber, a candlestick in her hand to light the way. And she does go to the nursery, to stroke her son's soft red hair and kiss his chubby cheeks. Lady is by the cradle, dutifully on guard. Sansa praises the direwolf and lays a hand on her head. Some part of her was expecting Lady to be among the dragons as she was in Sansa's dream.

Seeing Tybolt is fine, Sansa leaves the nursery. But she does not return to bed. Instead she ghosts down the many staircases that lead to the bowels of the Rock, making her way to the caverns that have been given over as a lair for the dragons. A sort of makeshift paddock to keep them out of the snow.

She almost loses her nerve when she reaches the naturally formed tunnel deep within the mountain and finds the fearsome Daenerys laying across the entrance to the cavern. But she reminds herself that she is doing this for Tybolt, that she owes it to him to at least try even if she doesn't think it will work, to given him every chance possible to grow up outside the Long Night.

(Catelyn kidnapped Kevin Lannister on an empty suspicion in her zeal to secure justice for her son. That zeal is Sansa's too, and she can't do any less.)

Dany inclines her head and backs out of the way.

Taking a deep breath, Sansa tries to still the pounding of her heart and enters the lair. Behind her, Dany moves to block the passageway once again, cutting off Sansa's escape route should her courage fail her. She swallows back bile even as her knees turn to water, making her wobble and nearly fall.

The dragons are amazing and magical and terrifying, especially when Jon is not present to control them. Lyanna is lounging in a pool of water, the natural heat of her body turning it into a hot spring, steam glistening on her white scales, lending them a rainbow sheen. Starkfire is sleeping on a high shelf of rock out of Sansa's reach, and is too small for a rider yet in any case, being a little smaller than a direwolf.

It is to the green and gold Tasherys that Sansa turns her gaze. The emerald dragon is cleaning her scales with her tongue, looking very like a scaly cat. A very large, scaly cat.  _Just like her namesake_ , Sansa thinks, a shrill giggle falling from her lips. She immediately claps her hands over her mouth and freezes, afraid the dragons may… well she isn't quite sure.

They ignore her. Still, she stays completely still out of a combination of caution and terror until her muscles are stiff and she's starting to tremble.

Taking a deep breath, Sansa resumes her approach to her chosen dragon, one shuffling step at a time. Tasherys ceases her grooming and huffs in Sansa's direction, making her freeze again.

She should have told someone she was coming down here. Should have brought Arya or Jon with her, to make sure nothing goes wrong if she fails. (When she fails. She isn't a warg. Why did she think this was a good idea?)

But she couldn't face the questions and fuss that was sure to result from her saying she wanted to try. She couldn't face the humiliation when ( _if_ ) she fails. And their people can't afford the loss of morale that would result from everyone being privy to her attempt. To think they might have a third rider, only to learn that Lady Sansa isn't made of the same stern stuff as her sister. At least this way her shame will be something known only to her and the dragons.

If she survives.

Tasherys wuffles again, curls of smoke coming from her nostrils, and then must decide that she either finds Sansa's presence acceptable or doesn't care one way or the other, because she returns to her grooming.

Sansa draws closer, the light from her candle bouncing along the walls thanks to her shaking hands. Sweat streams down her face, neck, and back and pools between her breasts, though the cavern is not really that much warmer than the rest of the properly heated rooms of the Rock.

At last, after what seems like several hours but could have been seconds for all Sansa knows, Sansa inches close enough to lay her head on Tasherys' neck.

The dragon snaps her head to the side, one large eye fixed on Sansa's face.

Sansa stares into that eye.

(The last warg who tried went mad.)

And she falls.

(There is madness in Sansa's blood. She will use it to set the world aflame.)

**-l-**

When the household rouses and Jon and Arya come to take Dany and Lyanna on their daily flight, Sansa joins them, perched confidently on Tasherys' back, still in her nightdress.

When they land in the courtyard a frantic Gerion comes running towards her, running his hands lewdly over her body, too concerned with checking her for injuries to care for who is watching. Sansa doesn't mind, basking in the attention and smirking at her mate.

"Looks like the dragon will have its third head after all," Jon comments, the tense lines around his eyes going slack for once as he gives her a small, sincere smile.

Once he has ascertained her health to his satisfaction, Gerion places a single kiss on Sansa's brow. Then he punches Jon in the face.

Sansa grins toothily.


End file.
